The Deformed Transformed; A Drama. BYRON (George Gordon, Lord).

Second Edition. 8vo. [231 x 145 x 12 mm]. 88, [2]blank, [6] pp. Bound c.1860 by Robinson of Portsmouth (with ink stamp on front fly-leaf) in half dark green goatskin, red cloth sides, the corners cut to an L shape and tooled with two blind fillets and a gilt fleuron and darts. The spine divided into six panels with raised bands flanked by gilt fillets, lettered in the second and fourth and dated at the foot, the others with the letter B surmounted by a Baron's coronet, maroon glazed paper endleaves, top edge gilt, the others uncut. (Slightly rubbed).
London: printed [by C. H. Reynell] for J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824.

Published in the same year as the first. With the half-title and 6pp of advertisements at the end. A very good copy in a curious binding. The coronet correctly belongs to a Baron, although it is possible that the binder had one such tool to designate all ranks of nobility. Any ideas who the B might be?

Robinson appears to be a previously unrecorded binder, though the stamp makes clear that this was his profession ("Robinson / Bookbinder / Portsmouth"). He is presumably the John Robinson, bookbinder, listed at 301 Lake Road in the 1865 Directory. Portsmouth was not renowned for its bookbinders - Ramsden, Bookbinders of the United Kingdom (Outside London) 1780-1840 came up with two names, Comerford (on a book dated 1817) and Hooper (1839 Directory), and Spawn and Kinsella, Ticketed Bookbindings from Ninetheenth-Century Britain added Batchelor (book dated 1851). John Collins was not able to contribute a single example in his catalogue of Particular Bindings.

Stock no. ebc6823