The Prisoner of Chillon

London: Day & Son, 1865. Hardcover. Very good. 12.25" x 9", 20 chromolithograph leaves printed rectos only, in beautiful publisher's binding of elaborately decorated three-tone purple cloth with beveled edges, all edges gilt. Corners and spine ends rubbed, binding delicate but holding, foxing to some blank pages (front and rear flyleaves, a few versos of the plates), title page appears to have been reinserted at some point and has some glue staining at the gutter. The stunning chromolithographs were desiged by the Scottish architects and designers William James Audsely and George Ashdown Audsley and printed by W.R. Tymmes, one of the leading chromolithographers of the period. In an article on the Victorian Web website, Simon Cooke writes that Day and Son were "the most influential proponent of picture-books illustrated by chromolithographs in the period from the mid-1850s to the end of the 1860s. Tymms became the publisher's foremost technician, and all of the imprints of this period give his name a prominent billing. The illuminations are extremely diverse, and Tymms was required to make accurate transcriptions which varied from the entirely ornamental to the figurative, and in a variety of styles," among them "the Audsleys' endlessly varied borders and decorative letters" in The Prison of Chillon. (Inventory #: 23305)