Bluebeard; or Fickle Famita and the Fatal Key, An Old Story Re-Written and Adapted as A Burlesque Opera, In Four Acts

Bombay: Printed at the Education Society's Steam Press, Byculla, 1890. 8vo, 203 x 127 mms., pp.l [ii], 43 [44 blank], eleven lithographic plates (six folding), sometime recased in plain cloth boards, new end-papers. Edmund Arthur Ponsonby Hobday (1859 - 1931), Royal Artillery, was the Quarter-Master of the Malakand Field Force. A skilled draughtsman/artist, he wrote and profusely illustrated his Sketches on service during the Indian frontier campaigns of 1897. He later went on to illustrate a number of other published memoirs by fellow officers, including Service and Sport on the Tropical Nile by C.A. Sykes, [London: John Murray, 1903]. So he is undoubtedly the creator of the illustrations for the text of this very curious volume. First published in in 1888, in Simla, in 44 pages, with copies found in BL, Liverpool, and Chicago. The only copy of this 1890 imprint is in the BL. The work has been widely reprinted.