FORE-EDGE PAINTINGS – HALL, Samuel Carter (1800-1889), editor. The Book of Gems. The Poets and Artists of Great Britain.London: Saunders and Otley, 1836-38.

A popular anthology of British poetry, in morocco bindings with fine fore-edge paintings.This three-volume anthology covers five hundred years of English poetry, from Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, and Shakespeare to Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Chatterton, and Burns, and other early 19th-century poets like Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, and Bayly. Brief biographical sketches and facsimiles of poet's autographs are also included, as well as some 150 steel-engraved portraits by F.W. Topham, W. Chevalier, W. Finden, and many others, after paintings and designs by numerous English artists, including Turner, Bonington, Landseer, and Maclise.

Three volumes, octavo (212 x 134mm). Engraved titles with vignettes, and c.150 steel engravings. Maroon morocco gilt by Fazakerley of Liverpool, with intricate rose plant on-lays, silk doublures and endpapers, and gauffered edges, each with three fore-edge vignette views of bucolic European villages, exotic seacoast cities, and ships tossing in stormy seas.