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Palmer, W. J.
The Tyne and Its Tributaries. Described and Illustrated [sold with additional copy in the first edition cloth].
Publisher: George Bell and Sons, London;
Date of Publication: 1882
Stock Code: 14634
First edition in deluxe publisher’s binding. Quarto, pp., xiv, 308, plus engraved frontispiece and numerous illustrative engravings within text, folding map of Tyne to end, errata slip tipped in. Full black morocco on bevelled boards; spine on five bands, titled and ornamented in gilt to compartments; River Tyne design, the same stamps and plates from the cloth original, in gilt to boards, gilt rolls to turn-ins; all edges gilt, marbled end-papers. Armorial bookplates of John Oxenham Bentley and George Oakley Fisher, Esq. (1859-1933) to front paste-down and front free end-paper, respectively. Gift inscription ‘to J. O. B. [i.e. Bentley], a dweller on the Thames // from R. L. P. a dweller on the Tyne // gift 12/84’, to verso of front free end-paper. Upper hinge cracked but holding well, joints a little rubbed. Contents clean, bright, and fresh. An excellent copy. A superb and rare example of the plate from a publisher’s cloth binding used on a deluxe binding in leather. A previous owner has noted, in pencil, on the front free end-paper that the book was bound by ‘Field and Co.’. Although we find no internal evidence of the binding being executed by an identifiable bindery, it is reminiscent of exhibition bindings executed for George Bell and Sons by Zaensdorf. The classic work on the River Tyne from source to sea, including both the North and South Tyne and many other springs and burns which feed into the system. The former owner, George Oakley Fisher, Esq. of Chilton Condover, Hampshire was a collector of antiquarian books from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. His library was sold as the first 205 lots at a mixed Sotheby’s sale on the 25 June 1934. £600.00