Punch and Judy, with illustrations drawn and engraved by George Cruikshank. Accompanied by the dialogue of the puppet-show, an account of its origin, and of puppet-plays in England. Second edition

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">8vo. pp 141, [1] (interspersed with ff. [24] (plates, some colored)). There are three copies in this collection. The present is in original cloth.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Second edition of a published Punch and Judy script, illustrated by the well-known caricaturist George Cruikshank. The writer, John Payne Collier, claimed the script to be based on the version performed by the "professor" Giovanni Piccini in the early 19th century, and Piccini himself had begun performing in the streets of London in the late 18th century. Collier's later career as a literary forger has cast some doubt on the authenticity of the script, which is rather literary in style and may well have been tidied up from the rough-and-tumble stree