Punch and Judy, with twenty-four illustrations, designed and engraved by George Cruikshank. And other plates. Accompanied by the dialogue of the puppet-show, an account of its origin, and of puppet plays in England. Fourth edition

Punch and Judy, with twenty-four illustrations, designed and engraved by George Cruikshank. And other plates. Accompanied by the dialogue of the puppet-show, an account of its origin, and of puppet plays in England. Fourth edition

Author: [Collier, John P. (John Payne)] ; Cruikshank, George (engr.)

Year: 1858

8vo. pp. 94, ff. [24] (plates). There are two copies in this collection. The first is in original wrappers and has an ownership inscription of David Beneridge [?]; the second is in cloth-backed boards, with the frontispiece and plates 1-13 colored. The title states “fourth edition,” while in fact it is the fifth edition of a published Punch and Judy script, illustrated by the well-known caricaturist George Cruikshank. The writer, John Payne Collier, claimed the script to be based on the version performed by the "professor" Giovanni Piccini in the early 19th century, and Piccini himself had begun performing in the streets of London in the late 18th century. Collier's later career as a literary forger has cast some doubt on the authenticity of the script, which is rather literary in style and may well have been tidied up from the rough-and-tumble street-theatre original. See A. & J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, II, p. 1083; British Library Catalogue, CCLXVII, p. 314.