Don Juan – Alfred Thornton

First Edition. Two volumes (1821, 1822). London: Printed for Thomas Kelly, 17 Paternoster-Row. Bound in red Morocco, Stern binder’s imprint. Gilt Edges Around. Six panel banded spine, gilt lettering. Inner gilt ruled. Ex libris bookplates Albert Henry Wiggin and Selden, with shadow of adhesive residue on endpapers around bookplates. Very Good Plus.

Volume One, frontispiece, [i-xii],[619], colophon, fifteen colored engravings including frontispiece (all present). Volume Two, frontispiece, [i-xi], list of illustrations and advertisement of volume one, [660], with sixteen colored illustrations including frontispiece (all present). Light foxing. Some wear at page edges, rubbing at edges of boards, volume one with chip (not loss) at head, volume two with scuff at tail. Hinges sound and sturdy, no loose leaves.

Thirty-one hand-colored aquatints by John Augustus Atkinson.

A satirical overview of life in the early 1800s. The first volume being a parody of Mozart and Byron, while the second volume imitates Egan’s work titled Life in London. (Abbey, Life, 323; Tooley 486.)