Tinker, Tailor
Wain (Louis).- Vredenburg (Edric)

First edition, 12 colour plates, illustrations, 8pp. advertisements, some gatherings and plates loose, upper hinge weak, original cloth-backed pictorial boards, extremities a little rubbed, 4to, [c.1914].

Concerning Cats: Two Tales
Mark Twain. San Francisco, Book Club of America, 1959.

xvi, 29, [2] pp. Introduction by Frederick Anderson. 4to, black cloth-backed patterned boards, spine label. One of 450 copies printed for the Colt Press by the Grabhorn Press.

B-A Note: Such an odd picture. His cigar looks more like a Pinocchio-nose at first glance.

Les Chats
François Augustin Paradis de Moncrif. Paris, Gabriel François Quillau, 1727.

Rare first edition of one of the earliest books exclusively devoted to cats. Written in the form of letters to a lady from the court it treats the position of the cat in different societies through history in an intentional pedantic erudite and at the same time frivolous style. At the end some cat-fables, love-letters between cats, letters from a cat to a dog, and a cat theatre-play were added. The beautiful plates inspired by Coypel show the Cat-God, cats enthroned, a cat made the sole beneficiary in the last will on a woman’s deathbed, the tomb of a cat, a cat’s theater, etc.

Contemporary calf, spine ribbed and richly gilt with a fleur-de-lys in every compartment, except one which is with a red morocco title-label. With large green-coloured woodcut vignet on title, large folding genealogical table of an Asian cat, engraving in Errata, and 9 full-page engraved plates, 2 folding, illustrating cats, engraved by Comte de Caylus and 2 signed by Goypel and many woodcut borders and tailpieces.

Cats 1820

From - Animal biography : or, authentic anecdotes of the lives, manners, amd economy, of the animal creation, arranged according to the system of Linneaus / By the Rev. William Bingley. via crackdog on flickr