The First Steel-Engraved Plate?, LARGE PAPER

The Social Day: A Poem, in Four Cantos.

London: Printed by J.(ames) Moyes, Greville Street for James Carpenter & Son, Old Bond Street; and R. Ackermann, Strand, 1823.

Price: $750.00


About the item

First Edition, Large Paper, with errata and List of Subscribers. Engraved title, portrait, and 30 engraved plates, India Proofs tipped in. xvi, [16], 354, [4] pp. 1 vols. 4to (11 x 7-1/2 inches). The First Steel-Engraved Plate?, LARGE PAPER. Bound in three quarters morocco, and marbled boards, t.e.g. Bound by J. Larkins. Fine. Hunnisett, Dictionary of British Steel Engravers, p. 138.

Item #231309

The plate on page 288, “Silent the guest surveyed the crowd”, engraved by Charles Warren, the leading protagonist of steel-engraving at this time, is dated 1822, and has traditionally been considered to be the first steel-engraved book illustration. Basil Hunnisett, in Steel Engraved Book Illustrations in England, expresses doubts as to whether it actually was engraved on steel, suggesting that the first may be Warren's engraving of Adam and Eve for an 1822 edition of Paradise Lost. Whatever the case may be, Coxe's poem--a paean to the pleasures of rural pastimes, especially sporting amusements--is beautifully illustrated in this sumptous Ackermann production.

Berry and Poole, in Annals of Printing, dates the first steel engravings at 1823, but does not cite a specific book. The book has an illustration by Constable, one of the first artists lending their work to this new media.