The Story Book for Little Folks

Gilt stamped cloth 12mo, 126pp. No date, ca. 1850. Color lithograph frontis and eight hand-colored engravings, 9 total color plates. Plate 7 has a hole in the paper with an old repair; worming affects the first nine leaves--the text is large enough that legibility is not affected--and a bit of the rear joint, but the volume is otherwise Very Good with a touch of sunning and mild foxing/age toning. An attractive deluxe production with a distinctive gilt bookseller's ticket to the front pastedown, all edges gilt. OCLC attributes authorship to Irish children's author Mary Elizabeth Southwell Dudley Leathley and lists 7 copies with only eight leaves of plates. Evocative illustrations, including a lady justice and a young man weeping at his father's deathbed. The lithograph is stylistically similar to McLoughlin publications, which would have just been starting out around that time. The publisher's name is printed in the corner under what looks like a monogram (M-L?)