[GILLRAY, James (1757-1815)]. A collection of 45 "suppressed" plates on 23 sheets, etched and engraved by Hannah Humphrey after James Gillray, variously dated in the plates 1779-1804 [but re-issued by Henry G. Bohn c.1851]. (The first two plates spotted, some light mainly marginal spotting to the other plates.) Folio (640 x 480mm). Bound in a contemporary half red morocco and marbled portfolio, the spine elaborately decorated in gilt, with a simple metal catch (not a lock, hence not requiring a key) on the flap (extremities rubbed, patch of wear to lower board, some staining). "Gillray's most enduring work ... was done as a caricaturist, and as a caricaturist pure and simple he holds a foremost place in that division of English graphic art. Much of the intensity, the almost ferocious energy, of his satire is scarcely conceivable in these milder days, but, that admission made, it is impossible not to admire his inexhaustible fertility of fancy, the frequent grandeur of his conception, the reckless audacity of his attack, and his skill in selecting the vulnerable side of his victims" (DNB). After Gillray's decline into insanity and his eventual death, the original plates of his caricatures passed into the hands of his publisher and (reputedly) sometime "companion" Hannah Humphrey; on her death, they were purchased by Henry G. Bohn who published a selection of them in 1818 and a further issue, with descriptions by M'Clean, in 1830. In 1851 he issued a folio volume entitled The Works ... from the Original Plates, with the addition of many subjects not before collected which contained 582 plates - virtually Gillray's complete oeuvre - and at the same time he issued the present supplement, or companion volume, without a title page, of 45 "suppressed plates" which were considered too explicit for general circulation.
