Early edition. Publisher's original embossed purple-brown cloth with gilt birds and titles to the spine. Yellow coated endpapers. Illustrated with 18 engraved plates, each depicting two birds (the plates are mirror copies of Eleazar Albin's Natural History of English Song-Birds). Contemporary bookseller's ticket to the front pastedown. A very good copy, the binding square and secure with a little wear to the head of the spine and a bump to the foot. The slightly shaken contents with a contemporary owner's pencil inscription (dated 1839) to the front pastedown, a little marking to the endpapers, the occasional mark to page margins, faint offsetting from a few plates to the facing text pages and a minor fold to the top corner of a handful of pages are otherwise in very good order.
A rare early nineteenth century title concerning the care, treatment and training of all manner of cage-birds, well-illustrated with a most charming suite of engravings depicting 36 species of bird. Only one copy is recorded on Worldcat (McGill), with no institutional copies in the UK or USA. The work was originally published c.1826 in an undated edition "printed for William Cole, 10 Newgate Street".
Stock code: 20106
£275