ROWLANDSON, Thomas

Pretty Little Games for Young Ladies & Gentleman.

[New York]: A few copies only printed for the artist's friends, 1930. Item #05292

Ten Amusing 'Erotic' Plates by Thomas Rowlandson

ROWLANDSON, Thomas. Pretty Little Games for Young Ladies & Gentleman. With Pictures of Good Old English Sports and Pastimes. By T. Rowlandson. [n.p.]: 1845. [i.e. New York: ca. 1930].

Small quarto (8 1/8 x 5 7/8 inches; 208 x 150 mm.). 63, [1, blank] pp. Ten engraved plates by Thomas Rowlandson.

Publisher's limp black hard-grain morocco, smooth spine ruled and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Near fine.

Thomas Rowlandson circulated his erotic engravings from 1800, individually and on demand, only among a small circle of friends and collectors.

"The object of this volume was to reproduce in form of a book, ten erotic plates by Rowlandson, which had been issued separately, about 1800; each plate is accompanied by a sheet of letter press from the pen of Hotten himself, and under each are a title and a few doggerel lines, etched, probably the production of Rowlandson's own Muse". (The Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature - referring to the original Camden Hotten edition of 1845).

"During the final years of his life, Rowlandson privately printed at least ten stipple engravings depicting sexual encounters he called Anatomy Diversions. Long after Rowlandson's death, John Camden Hotten (1832-1873) collected a set of these prints and published them in a bound edition accompanied by his own equally explicit poems." (Princeton University Library).

The subjects are:

1. The Willing Fair, or any Way to Please
2. The Country Squire New Mounted
3. The Hairy Prospect or the Devil in a Fright
4. The Larking Cull
5. The Toss Off
6. New Feats of Horsemanship
7. Rural Felicity or Love in a Chaise
8. The Sanctified Sinner
9. The Wanton Frolic
10. The Curious Wanton

Pisanus Fraxi (H.S. Asbee). The Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature. Centuria Librorum Absconditorum, volume two, pp. 346-354; Gay-Lemonnyer III, 845; Kearney, 1607.

Price: $850.00