PBA Galleries

Volume 1 only [of 2]. 124, [4] pp. Woodcut illustrations. 60x45 mm, period boards. Custom fitted cloth box, brown morocco spine. First Edition.

Excessively rare first edition, with panther illustration on page 42, not repeated in the second edition of the same year. A unique copy, an unrecorded issue: gatherings A-D are as in the 1st Edition and gatherings F-H as in the 2nd Edition, gathering E appears to be in later textual state but not from 2d Ed. All copies appearing in the auction records are of the 2nd edition, with the exception of the present copy which was purchased at Sotheby's August, 2001. Louis W. Bondy notes that "the most remarkable tiny books of the [18th] century were perhaps the children's books published by Thomas Boreman in London in the early 1740s. These Gigantick Histories were thus entitled by their publisher because Boreman's bookshop was situated "near the two Giants in Guildhall". The present title was the third in Gigantick Histories series.