[Burney (Edward Francis, original water colour)] COLLINS (William). The Poetical Works [.] Enriched with elegant Engravings. To which is prefixed a Life of the Author, by Dr. Johnson.. Printed by T. Bensley for E. Harding, 1798.

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Description: 18 engraved head and tail-pieces (mixed mezzotint and etching), the odd small spot, this copy extra-illustrated by George Daniel (his note to the initial blank, see below) with 21 engravings from various sources, to the recto of the frontispiece of which an original water-colour by Edward Francis Burney (illustrating, and with a quotation from, 'The Passions'), later nineteenth-century gift inscription to verso of initial blank, 'Amabel Mary Cumberland, from MDC [i.e., Margaret Delicia Cumberland], March 1889', pp. xiv, 165, crown 8vo, early nineteenth-century binding brown crushed morocco by Charles Lewis for George Daniel, the upper board with the latter's monogram stamped in gilt, tooled border in gilt to both boards, the spine gilt in compartments between five raised band, lettered direct, a.e.g., a touch of rubbing, marbled endpapers, front pastedown with armorial bookplate of Henry Collins, very good. The first Bensley edition, here enriched with 21 proof engravings: a few of these, George Daniel, an early owner of this copy notes, originate in Sharpe's edition of 1804, these drawn by Richard Westall, others being in the main portraits - including of various personages referred to in the verse and of Collins himself, with one in the latter category (of the author as a boy) believed by Daniel 'to be unique' - but chief amongst them is an original water-colour by Edward Francis Burney. George Daniel was a notable book-collector as well as an author (of satirical verse and plays); his long note regarding this copy is dated 1835, from the property at Canonbury Square that housed his 'first four folio editions of Shakespeare, quarto editions of separate plays, and a collection of black-letter ballads', etc. Charles Lewis was, Mirjam J. Foot notes in the ODNB, 'unquestionably London's leading binder, patronized by all the great collectors of the day' - he and Daniel both died of apoplexy, in 1836 and 1864 respectively. Burney's water-colour, illustrating Music, the 'sphere-descended maid' (a counterpart to the illustration at the foot of the poem, p. 83). Burney, the favourite cousin of novelist Fanny Burney, whose portrait he painted, was himself from a musical family and his paintings often took that theme.

Seller: Blackwell's Rare Books ABA ILAB BA, Oxford, United Kingdom