Engraved title page: ILLUSTRATION | OF | TIME. | GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. | “THERE IS A TIME FOR ALL THINGS”. | TEMPUS EDAX RERUM. | LONDON | Published May 1st 1827 by the Artist – 22 Myddelton Terrace Pentonville. – Sold by Js. Robins & Co. Ivy Lane Paternoster Row.
Oblong folio, 33.5 x 44 cm. Engraved vignette title page and six not-coloured engraved plates with multiple images showing thirty-five humorous scenes.
First edition, first issue. Uncoloured. Pristine condition.
Half-leather bound in marbled cardboard and red morocco and gild lettering and arabesque. Frontispiece and 6 plates with protective tissues.
Content:
1. Time-Called & Time-Come (five sketches)
2. Behind Time (seven sketches)
3. Time Thrown Away (six sketches)
4. Hard Times [&] Term Time (five sketches)
5. Time Badly Employed (five sketches)
6. Christmas Time (seven sketches)
British Museum № 1978,U.3026.1. BM description: “Frontispiece, the title on a background of symmetrical but dilapidated and grass-grown masonry. On the summit stands a little laughing gnome, with a wide hat and a body formed of an hour-glass; Inset is an oval bordered by a serpent with its tail in its mouth (emblem of eternity), in which is an aged and all-devouring Time (bald except for a forelock), seated behind a table whose surface is the base of the design. He puts to his mouth a fork on which is speared an elephant with a castle on its back containing tiny figures with spears. In his r. hand is a spoon containing a country church. His table is covered with dishes, and at his r. hand is a sickle. The central and biggest dish is heaped with a jumble of tiny objects: crown, table, chair, wheelbarrow, picture; round the room sit little figures: a soldier, parson, lady and child, &c. The ten other dishes contain: an antique glass coach with horses and footmen; an overladen camel beside a palm-tree; ruins of a castle; a farmhouse; a shepherd and sheep; a dismantled cannon and balls, cattle, a man-of-war in full sail; a ruinous Gothic cathedral; a clump of trees (the last two are dominated by a large decanter). Below Time are two (Egyptian) pyramids. Above: ‘There Is A Time For All Things’; below: ‘Tempus Edax Rerum’. 1 May 1827. Etching.”
Bibliography:
- Reid, G W, A descriptive catalogue of the works of George Cruikshank, London, 1871.
- Stephens, Frederic George; George, Mary Dorothy, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 11 vols, London, BMP, 1870.
- Cohn, A M, George Cruikshank, catalogue raisonné, London, 1924.
