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First Edition Thus. Hard cover, 8vo in quarter red buckram over hay-yellow paper covered boards, printed paper label in black on hay-yellow paper applied to the spine. xviii, 148 pp., 25 pp. with unnumbered illustration plates of the original 24 etchings and four woodcut engravings originally featured in the 1828 First Edition. This Limited Edition, numbered 169 of 376. Colophon: "An edition of 376 copies, designed and printed by D.B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston; set in Scotch-free Type and printed on Wove Antique paper." Distributed by Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., New York, October 25, 1929.CONDITION: Very Good Plus. Small spot to front board, moderate age toning to pages, many unopened. Now in mylar. **The Punch and Judy puppet show is a classic of British entertainment, "when children, untroubled by educational theories or parental scruples, were permitted to rejoice naturally in the cracking of heads, the din of battle, the triumph of Unworthiness over Virtue and the Law." (from the Foreward.) This volume traces the remote seventeenth-century Italian roots of of the puppet drama, commedia dell'arte, the spread of marionette drama during the Thirty Years War, characterizations and text for the plays, as well as the enduring artistry of English Artist George Cruikshank's engravings of the same, as first seen in book form in 1828. Cruikshank's "signature"is a facsimile only to the ffep. The original drawings were hand-colored by Cruikshank in the first edition, and are now housed in the V & A Museum, South Kensington, London. OCLC 2720476.
Ref: PLAY 9079
$85.00