1884 Rare Victorian Book - GULLIVER's Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World illustrated by Thomas Morten.
(description)
Author: Jonathan Swift. (Illustrator, Thomas Morten).
Title: Gulliver's travels into several remote regions of the world. By Dean Swift. With Explanatory Notes and a Life of the Author by John Francis Waller. Illustrated by the Late T. Morten.
Publisher: London: Cassell, Petter and Galpin, and Co., no date (circa 1884).
Language: Text in English.
Size: 10 " X 8 ".
Pages: xliii-352 pages + catalogue.
Binding: Attractive and very good original full decorated cloth binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed mainly on the upper part of the rear cover - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. A rare find in any condition!
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare light foxing or staining - as shown, rear inner hinge slightly worn but still tight).
Illustrations: Profusely illustrated with a color frontispiece and many black and white illustrations by Thomas Morten.
Estimate: (Scarce with practically no other copy available worldwide in this original binding).
The book: Rare and very attractive edition of Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World illustrated by Thomas Morten.
The author: Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, the Drapier – or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
The illustrator: MORTEN, THOMAS (1836–1866), was a painter and book illustrator, born at Uxbridge, Middlesex, in 1836. He came to London and studied at the painting school kept by J. Mathews Leigh in Newman Street. Morten was chiefly employed as an illustrator of books and serials, mostly of a humorous nature. The most successful were his illustrations to an edition of Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' published in 1864, which ran into several editions. Morten also practiced as a painter of domestic subjects, and was an occasional exhibitor at the Royal Academy, sending in 1866 'Pleading for the Prisoner.' His affairs, however, became embarrassed, and he committed suicide on 23 Sept. 1866.