Books

Pictorial lettersheet with a border of engraved vignette illustrations, manuscript additions to the central space. 485 by 380mm. Old folds with small areas of separation and loss where folds meet. Two closed tears repaired with tape, one with a chip affecting top margin only. Browning to edges. London, R[ichar]d Carpenter, An apparently unrecorded large lettersheet, illustrated with shipwreck scenes from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. First published in 1719, the popularity of Defoe's tale resulted in not only multiple editions in multiple formats, but it also appeared as juvenile narratives in chapbooks, deluxe suites of engraved plates, transformation cards, engraved sets, and even this lettersheet. The scenes are captioned as follows: Foundering in Yarmouth Roads; Taken by a Sallee Rover and carried into Slavery; Makes his escape from Sallee; His appearance, Habitation & Canoe; Shipwrecked on an Uninhabited Island; and Taken up by a Portuguese Ship. With manuscript addition signed ?Jonh Henson Thorney Fen 1823? These constitute two stanzas copied in best penmanship from Nathaniel Cotton's poem 'The Fireside'.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, is one of the earliest and most influential novels in the history of English literature. It is a fictional autobiography of the title character, a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story is widely perceived as a comment on the British Imperialism of the age and the emerging ideology of the 'self-made man', and it reflects on the author's vast array of experiences.