The Old Book Appreciator

Last week at the Lilly Library, I saw an edition of a book I had heard about called Gavarni in London: Sketches of Life and Character, or alternately Sketches of London Life, published in London in 1849 by David Bogue, 86 Fleet Street. This book is unique as one of the only examples in English of a type of book artist Paul Gavarni became very popular for in France, where the editors would solicit essays on various aspects of a type of person seen in daily life—dancers, tailors, flaneurs—and Gavarni would produce illustrations for these essays. (He initially came to prominence for his illustrations of a collected works of Balzac.) What surprised me when I saw this book in person is that these illustrations (“engraved by Henry Vizatelly” according to the title page) are in full color, which is not necessarily always the case with books illustrated by Gavarni. It would seem this book was an attempt by Gavarni (and his London publishers) to create a crossover hit, to replicate the model that made Gavarni successful in France and apply it to an English setting, using English authors. The “popular writers” of the “illustrative essays” described on the title page—John Oxenford, Shirley Brooks, Joseph Stirling Coyne, the editor Albert Smith—were novelists and magazine writers of the time and a handful of the contributors seem to have been regular contributors to Punch.

(Addendum: It also happens, writes Alan McNee, that Gavarni was in London partly to escape his creditors in France, and he turns out to have been a mercurial fellow who feuded with English writers like Douglas Jerrold and Thackaray, who declined to contribute to the book, and Smith found him difficult to work with. Wendy Kolmar has written a more detailed review of a facsimile edition of the book in the London Literary Journal.)

The full book has been digitized and can be read on HathiTrust. You can also look at just the pictures in the gallery below (I’ve also included some in-person pictures as well; which, to my shock, are in gorgeous full-color!–a good argument for coming to the Lilly to see the books in person, if you ask me!)