Title: Punch’s real history. With twenty-eight illustrations, drawn and engraved By George Cruikshank. Accompanied by the tragical comedy or comical tragedy of Punch and Judy; the explanation of the puppet-show, and account of its origin. The third edition
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">8vo. pp. 141. Contains illustrations. Original red cloth. Bookmark of William Nash Skillicorne, M.A., ownership inscription of S.A. Rochlin (15.7.1948), stamp of Williams’ Library Cheltenham.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The second reissue of the sheets of the 1828 second edition (see Bib# 4117090/Fr# 908 in this collection). The title states “third edition,” while in fact it is the fourth edition of a published Punch and Judy script, illustrated by the well-known caricaturist George Cruikshank. The writer, John Payne Collier, claimed the script to be based on the version performed by the "professor" Giovanni Piccini in the early 19th century, and Piccini himself had begun performing in the streets of London in the late 18th century. Collier's later career as a literary forger has cast some doubt on the authenticity of the script, which is rather literary in style and may well have been tidied up from the rough-and-tumble street-theatre original. See A. &amp; J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, II, p. 1083; J. St. John, The Osborne Collection of early children's books, 1566-1910; a catalogue prepared at Boys and Girls House. Toronto, 1958-1975, p. 241.</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/permalink/01JHU_INST/1lu78g9/alma991004579919707861" rel="nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>