[George Cruikshank, illustrator and engraver associated with Dickens.] Five original loose engravings from Cruikshank’s ‘Comic Alphabet’, and four steel engravings from ‘The Comic Almanac’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. ONE: Five engravings from the ‘Comic Alphabet’. All about 8 x 12 cm. Uncoloured. Originally part of a long single piece of paper, fan-folded. In good condition, lightly aged. Two laid down on pieces of grey paper (cut from an album). The five are: ‘C / Chimpanzee’ (hanging from a tree branch in a circus booth, observed by chimp-looking individual in top hat), ‘R Racing’ (two men in a sack race), ‘S / Singing’ (society woman playing piano for her long-necked friends), ‘X / Xantippe’ (woman pouring bucket of slips on seated old man in Ancient Greece), ‘Z / Zoophyte’ (pedlar taking knife and fork to animal hanging from branch). TWO: Four engravings from the ‘Comic Almanac’, all with facsimile signature of ‘George Cruikshank’ at bottom left. Each 13.5 x 9 cm with corners clipped. Uncoloured. Somewhat discoloured and worn. The four are: ‘Going to St. Paul’s’ (the celebrated Blue Coat School procession), ‘Horticultural Fate [sic]’ (busy crowd of lower middle-class dancers between greenhouses, one with umbrella), ‘Lady Day - Old & New Style’ (a ball, with various figures in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fashions), ‘Twelfth Night’ (grotesque Pickwickian party, with fat women and children, in drawing room). See Image.