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Author: Hogarth, William
Title: The Original Works of William Hogarth
Place Published: London
Publisher:John and Josiah Boydell
Date Published: 1790
Description:

Two printed sheets comprising title leaf and plate list plus 103 engravings on 84 sheets, including frontispiece, plus one additional later engraving pasted onto one of the blank leaves which are bound between each plate. (Atlas folio) 64.5x47.5 cm (25¼x18¾"), full tree calf, spine and corners rebacked.

The first edition of Boydell's collection, with 103 plates. This edition, printed from the original plates, is the first posthumous complete edition. Later editions contained 107 engravings (second edition, 1792) and 110 engravings (third edition, c.1805). Hogarth's engraved plates were left to his wife following his death in 1764. The Boydells purchased the plates from the widow's cousin, Mary Lewis, after which they offered the prints in the present complete edition as well as individually (the plate list also serves as a price list for the individual prints). The engravings are strong impressions on English thick wove paper with broad margins.

"[Hogarth] retains his unique position among English artists. It is as a pictorial chronicler of life and manners, as a satirist and humourist on canvas, that he makes his main demand upon posterity. His skill in seizing upon the ridiculous and the grotesque in life was only equalled by his power of rendering the tragic and the terrible" - (DNB). Rarely encountered complete.

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Covers somewhat worn, calf chipped away in places, especially spine; hinges tender, light foxing throughout, largely to margins, a few small closed tears or smudges in the margins, two plates creased down the center, very good.