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My Cousin in the Army: or, Johnny Newcombe on the Peace Establishment
London: Printed for J. Johnston, 1822. Item #06530
Johnny Newcome Returns: The Soldier’s Comic Progress
A Spirited Sequel to the Celebrated Naval Satire - With Fine Cruikshank Plates
[MITFORD, John]. My Cousin in the Army: or, Johnny Newcome on the Peace Establishment. A Poem. By a Staff Officer. London: Printed for J. Johnston, 1822.
First edition. Octavo (9 x 5 5/8 inches; 228 x 143 mm.). [4], 316 pp. Sixteen hand-colored aquatint plates (including frontispiece) by Isaac Robert Cruikshank and Charles Williams. Plates watermarked 1821.
A short marginal tear (3/4 inch) to title, slight creasing to plates opposite pp. 173 and 285, and a neatly restored outer blank margin to the plate opposite p. 313 (loss minimal). Light offsetting from plates (as usual) and a few minor smudges.
Handsomely bound in mid-twentieth-century full burgundy levant morocco by Rivière & Son (stamp-signed on verso of front free endpaper), covers with gilt double fillet border, spine richly tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, gilt board edges and turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Armorial bookplate of Harry Bradfer-Lawrence on front pastedown. An excellent copy.
A lively and richly illustrated military satire, My Cousin in the Army forms the companion volume to Mitford’s earlier and highly successful Johnny Newcome in the Navy (1818), transferring the comic misadventures of the naïve recruit from sea to land. Cast in brisk octosyllabic verse, the poem offers a vivid and often irreverent portrait of army life in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, blending anecdote, caricature, and social observation in a manner closely aligned with the Regency taste for humorous narrative.
The hand-colored aquatints by Isaac Robert Cruikshank and Charles Williams - both central figures in the golden age of British caricature - provide much of the work’s enduring appeal. Their plates, animated and theatrical, capture the follies, vanities, and absurdities of military life with a sharp eye and a lively palette, placing the work firmly within the tradition of illustrated comic narratives popularized by contemporaries such as the Doctor Syntax series and Life in London.
Mitford himself remains one of the more colorful and tragic figures of the period: a former naval officer present at major engagements of the French Revolutionary Wars, later reduced by dissipation and instability to a precarious literary existence. His writing - energetic, unpolished, and often drawn from lived experience - retains an immediacy that lends authenticity to the comic episodes described.
A pleasing copy of a work that stands among the more engaging illustrated satires of the post-Napoleonic period, enhanced by an attractive Rivière binding and distinguished provenance.
Abbey, Life, 370; Tooley 166.
Price: $1,250.00