Fables.- Gay (John) & Bewick (Thomas, illustrator)

Fables.- Gay (John), Bewick (Thomas, illustrator) & Northcote (James)

Fables by the late Mr. Gay. In One Volume Complete, engraved frontispiece, 67 woodcut head-pieces and thirty-five tail-pieces by Thomas Bewick, a little offsetting, a little spotting and dust soiling, brown buckram, gilt, yellow endpaper, rubbed, small 8vo, Printed by and for T. Saint, W. Charnley & J. Whitfield & Co., Newcastle, 1779; with Gay (John) Fables by John Gay, 2 vol., engraved vignette titles, 68 plates, including 12 by William Blake, list of subscribers at end, light age yellowing, light foxing and offsetting, modern quarter calf, new endpapers, 8vo, Printed for John Stockdale, 1793; Bewick (Thomas) Select Fables, Imperial Paper copy, wood-engraved portrait frontispiece, title vignette and several text illustrations, occasional scattered foxing, bookplates of Katherine E. Wheeler & Reverend Edmund Leopold Lockyer, contemporary half brown calf, marbled endpapers and edges, rubbed, [Tattersfield TB 2.576], 8vo, S. Hodgson, 1820; & Northcote (James) One hundred fables, original and selected. (First) & Second series in 2 vol., vol. 1 title in red and black, with vignette, illustrations throughout, 4 publisher’s leaves of ads at end occasional spotting, owner’s annotations to front free endpapers, paper boards, rubbed, vol. 2 title vignette, illustrations throughout, contemporary buckram, gilt, a.e.g., rubbed, 8vo, Lawford & John Murray, 1828, 1833 (6)

***First work. The first edition with Thomas Bewick illustrations, which were based on the copper engravings by William Kent, John Wootton, and Henri Gravelot in the two-volume London edition of 1727 and 1738. John Bewick was himself to illustrate Gay's Fables in an immensely successful edition first published in 1788.