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STEPHENS, Henry. L.
The Comic Natural History of the Human Race.
These images poke fun at the great and good of the day. Caricatures from 1851 by American artist Henry Louis Stephens (1824–1882). "The Comic Natural History of the Human Race" was the first American book of caricatures and the first American book to be printed using chromolithography. The caricatures are, in a way, crude but humourous.
- Published
- Philadelphia: S. Robinson, 1851.
- Plates
- 40
- Binding/Size
- M=4to
- Value
- 0-5000
- Published
- Philadelphia: S. Robinson, 1851.
- Ref
- 168
4to. Blue boards neatly rebacked in 1/4 leather, gilt-lettered to spine. Foxing and spotting as usual to text and illustrations, but colouring remains bright, and the images are clean. Laid in is a useful two-page letter dated 5/26/46 to the previous owner from the chief of the Reference Department NYPL identifying the actual caricatured people. Forty illustrations by Henry Stephens popular early American comic artist colour-lithographed by Rothenthal, some with partial hand-colouring. The anthropomorphic figures (birds, animals, and fish with human heads and faces) represent notable contemporaries. For example, Humbug" is P.T. Barnum and Henry Clay is "the same old coon". Coloured plates in order: 1. Frontispiece. The Hen that hatched this egg. (Henry L. Stephens) 2. The Jail Bird. 3. The Legal Bird. (Richard Vaux) 4. The Giraffe. (John E. Ownes, as Jake) 5. The StarFish. (Edwin Forrest) 6. The Milliner Bird. (Minnie Doyle) 7. The Lark. 8. The King Bird. (Robert P. King and Alexander Baird, who printed this book) 9. The Humbug. (P.T. Barnum) 10. The Widow Bird. 11. The Butcher Birds. 12. The Gallows Bird. 13. The Taylor Bird. (Mary Cecelia Taylor, singer) 14. The Little Dear. 15. The Jolly Old Cock. (John Swift) 16. The Same Old Coon. (Henry Clay) 17. The Florence Humming Bird. (Thomas B. Florence) 18. The Mackarel. 19. One of the Rats. 20. The Cuttle Fish. (William E. Burton, comedian) 21. The GoldFish. (Francis M. Drexel) 22. The Sonny and the Sucker. 23. The Canvas Back Duck. (John A. Woodside, artist) 24. The Wharf Rat. 25. The Sea Bass. (Edward Sequin, singer) 26. The Shark and the Gudgeon. 27. The Stool Pigeon. 28. The Literary Bird. (Cornelius Mathews, author) 29. The Rice Crow. (Thomas Daniel Rice) 30. The Bird of Paradise. (Emily Schaumberg) 31. The Masonic Terrapin. (Samuel Robinson) 32. The Old Shad & Young. 33. Driesbach's Lion and Black Tiger. (Herr Driesbach & Thomas H. Rockwell, lion trainer & restauranteur respectively) 34. The Vampire. 35. The Catamaran and the Owl. (Owl = Joseph A. Speel, bookbinder) 36. The Woodpecker. (William B. Gihon, of Philadelphia, wood engraver) 37. The Night Hawk. 38. The SunBird. (Jim S. Wallace, publisher Daily Sun) 39. The Catorn's Warbler. (Kate Horn, singer) 40. The Alms-house Bird.
