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An Odd Bestiary, or, a Compendium of instructive and entertaining Descriptions of Animals, culled from five Centuries of Travelers’ Accounts, Natural Histories, Zoologies, &c. by Authors famous and obscure, arranged as an Abecedary.

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First edition, numbered 69 of 200 copies from a limited edition of 300 and signed by the artist.

This attractive work presents an alphabetical selection of twenty-six animals – extant, extinct, and mythic – pairing sensitive and at times striking woodcuts by Robinson with ancient and modern texts selected by the poet Laurie Block, from Heliodorus and Pliny to Darwin and Melville via Mandeville and Marco Polo.

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KOH, John.

Dogs in Early Photography.

Throughout history, dogs have been a subject in art; dogs were featured in cave drawings, coins, funerary sculptures or medieval marginalia. Before smartphones allowed dog owners to capture and share every moment of their dogs’ lives, fine art documented this relationship and promoted the dog from a supporting to a leading role. While Renaissance and Baroque portraiture is the first clear sign of the increasingly close emotional connection between humans and dogs, it was in the nineteenth century that this new relationship truly began to take hold, as the Industrial Revolution brought about a growing middle class and, just at this moment of enormous social change, dog-loving Queen Victoria made dog ownership prestigious and fashionable. For the first time, companion dog ownership began to transcend social class as the aristocracy and the middle and working classes embraced their new canine family members. Meanwhile, the nascent world of photography allowed dog owners to capture images of their pets, and the mass production of images made it possible at a reasonable cost. As a result, photography has had an outsized impact on the dog, its social position, and its importance to modern society.

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LARGE-PAPER COPY ARISTOTLE.

Αριστοτελους περι ποιητικης: Aristotelis de poetica liber ex versione Theodori Goulstoni. Lectionis varietatem e codd. IV. Bibliothecae Mediceae, verborum indicem et observationes suas adjunxit T. Winstanley…

Large-paper issue of the first Winstanley edition, handsomely bound. The first work published by the Oxford historian and classicist Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823), subsequently Camden Professor of History and Laudian Professor of Arabic, this edition of Aristotle’s De poetica was based on the 1623 version by the physician Theodore Goulston (1575–1632), and remained a much used text at Oxford over the following century. Aristotle’s notion of ‘mimesis’, the view that art imitates nature, prevailed for over two centuries over the conflicting theory that stressed the creativity of the poet. In the last third of the eighteenth century the debate about mimesis in literature, visual arts, and music became exceptionally productive, culminating in the Romantic revolution.

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