LIVES OF FAMOUS LONDON BEGGARS with forty portraits of the most remarkable drawn from life by...

London: Diprose and Bateman, n.d. (ca.1890's). Illustrated by b/w frontis (St. Martin, the patron saint of beggars from a rare print), 32 full page plates, 5 First letter illuminations (1 publisher), 5 text cuts (this somehow adds up to 40). Reprint edition. c.1815 as Etchings Of Remarkable Beggars Itinerant Traders And Other Persons Of Notoriety In London And Its Environs (Folio/48 plates); c.1817 as Vagabondiana; Or Anecdotes Of Mendicant Wanderers Through The Streets of London (36cm/33 plates/pp. 52 Francis Douce 1757-1834, text); c.1839 as The Cries of London: Exhibiting Several of the Itinerant Traders of Antient and Modern Times. Copied from Rare Engravings, Or Drawn From The Life by...with a Memoir and Portrait of the Author (33cm/30 plates, pp. xv, [99]), etc. Burgundy blind-stamped cloth, gilt print topboard, green floral eps. Small 4to (52cm). pp. 30 (Francis Douce text), [64] first plate unnumbered, 31 numbered. About very good. One faint previous owner embossed stamp applied to floral ffep, wear at corners, spine is a bit wrinkled from previous repair attempt, hinges tender with some pull to front pastedown/ffep at gutter, small dirt stain in text and pages slightly drab. The plethora of title and plate variations since the 1815 first edition deserves an honorable mention, but first appearance of title as such. Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum from 1816, engraver, draughtsman. (View our listing OWBVAG 112733)...Contents of this volume nearly identical to 1874, "Vagabondiana"..