Furniss, Henry (Harry)

Original Illustrations for Paradise in Piccadilly : The Story of Albany

London: 1910-24. Hard Cover. This is a collection of 31 original pen and ink drawings that Harry Furniss did as illustrations for his last book, Paradise in Piccadilly, a history of Albany and the many celebrities who lived there over time, including Lord Byron, Gladstone, Bulwer-Lytton, Disraeli, and many other notables. Furniss, who died in 1925, was a noted illustrator and caricaturist. He was born in Ireland in 1854, but left there in the early 1870s to seek work in London. After several years of free-lancing, which included publishing caricatures in the Illustrated London News, he began contributing regularly to Punch magazine and joined their staff in 1884. He later started his own magazine, Like Joko, but it wasn't a success. Furniss wrote and illustrated twenty-nine books of his own, and illustrated over thrifty books by other authors. The drawings for this book vary in size and in the type of paper used. Some are on boards while others are on thinner paper. Each drawing is signed, and many have the titles of the subject and notes to the printer. They are all in very good condition. Included with this collection also are six unrelated letters (some with self-caricatures) to Lewis Benjamin, who wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Melville and was likely Furniss's unacknowledged collaborator. A copy of the book itself is also provided. This is a delightful trove of original illustrations by a popular artist of his time. ORIGINALART/120810. Fine.