A SHORT HISTORY OF BIRDS AND BEASTS / THE HISTORY OF LITTLE KING PIPPIN / THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

London and Wellington, Salop / York: Printed for Houlston and Son / J. Kendrew, 1830. Fine.. Sammelband of three scarce 19th-century chapbooks for children, two pious and one impious — their woodcuts hand-colored with exquisite high quality. The first two chapbooks in this volume were printed and sold by Frances Houlston of Wellington in Shropshire, the widow of bookseller Edward Houlston. In the verse HISTORY OF BIRDS & BEASTS, the Butterfly is the object of some particularly savage character assassination in spite of habitually minding its own business, denounced as nothing but a caterpillar in fancy clothes. In HISTORY OF LITTLE KING PIPPIN, naughty boys are devoured by a band of tigers, wolves, and lions and thereafter consigned to hellfire — all except Harry Harmless, a sort of proto-Grizzly Man who prays to be saved from the wild and is therefore befriended by the lions, who will not eat a boy whose heart is pure.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN was printed by publisher James Kendrew of York, who "employed his daughter and other female relatives to colour plates and valentines for him" (Neuberg). It offers a change of tone with a sequence of dog-bites-man comic role reversals, most involving animals turning the tables on their oppressors: a goose roasting a cook, a bird shooting a hunter, a deer on horseback mercilessly pursuing a man in what could pass for a lost FAR SIDE panel.

The woodcuts are hand-colored throughout with exceptional skill and care, as well as an eye for color — an unusual show of virtuosity in hand-colored chapbooks of this era. 3.75'' x 2.5''. Contemporary gilt-ruled tree calf sympathetically rebacked with original gilt-stamped spine laid down. Original color chapbook wrappers bound in. Hand-colored frontispieces and illustrations throughout. Faint effacing to top margin of KING PIPPIN title page, occasional faint foxing. (Inventory #: 53107)