WEST, William. Fifty Years’ Recollections of an old bookseller; consisting of anecdotes, characteristic sketches, and original traits and eccentricities, of Authors, Artists, Actors, Books, Booksellers, and of the periodical press for the last half century, with appropriate selections; and an unlimited Retrospect, including some extraordinary circumstances relative to The Letters of Junius, and a chain of corroborative evidence respecting their author.

AN OLD CORK BOOKSELLER

Bound with: Three Hundred and Fifty years Retrospection of an Old Bookseller; containing an account of the origin and progress of Printing, Type Founding, and Engraving, in their various branches; also the origin of the earliest Books, Pamphlets, Magazines, Reviews, Periodical Essays and Newspapers; with Biographical Anecdotes and Portraits. Illustrated. London & Cork: Printed by and for the Author, 1837/35.Octavo. pp. [viii], [9]-76, [21],102-200. Original cloth, titled in gilt. Separate title to the second part, lithograph portrait frontispieces, with a further nine lithographed portraits, four plates, woodcuts in the text. Spine rebacked. A very good copy. Rare.
An appealingly eccentric work, full of curious information. In the first part of the work, the text proceeds to page 76 before suddenly breaking pagination to incorporate Sketches of the Life of Captain Grose, Grose’s Rules for Drawing Caricatures and An Essay on Comic Painting. A second title is then inserted, but then continues with the sequential pagination that preceded the second title. “It is curious to see a bookseller adopt the absurd plan of noting the contents of the second half of his book by a fresh title ... It is an extremely curious and amusing work and deserves more attention than it has received.”

[Cat 161]