ALIQUIS, pseud. [Samuel Edward MABERLY] The Flight of the Old Woman who was Tossed up in a Basket

Folding handcoloured panorama 10.5cm in width, with a series of 12 handcoloured interconnected plates extending to a grand total of 230cm in length; printed and coloured to recto only; contained within card covers containing onlaid labels and adjoined with red cloth backing; upper cover with title label showing the title lettering printed to a bedsheet hanging over the edge of a basket with a broom and cobwebs visible; beneath; two young boys look through a telescope as a man gesticulates, as if mid story; a synopsis is printed beneath: ‘There was an old woman tossed up in a basket / Nineteen times as high as the moon / And where she was going I couldn’t but ask it / For in her hand she carried a broom / Old Woman! Old Woman! Old Woman quoth I / Oh wither Oh Wither Oh Wither so high / “To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky / And I’ll be with you again by and bye’; printed beneath is an additional note ‘NB the purchasers of this work may rely upon receiving the earliest information of the return of the Old Woman’; additional advertisement for ‘The Pictorial Humpty Dumpty’ printed to rear board; the rhyme itself printed to a folding sheet to the inside cover describing each individual plate; a bright example, with a few marks and chips to edges, as is common; the plates with archival tape reinforcement to versos; a few chips and marks; all plates present and complete; some darkening and rubbing to boards as expected; an excellent survival.

A scarce and rather beautiful handcoloured panorama of this children’s rhyme, which follows the old woman as she begins her voyage into the skies, tossed up by men who ‘full mischievouslie disposed’ bore her aloft by means of a blanket; how she encounters much rain; how she passes a man ‘with lanthorne dogge & bushe of thorne presentying moonshine as Maister Will Shakespeare saith’; showing her knitting as she passes the dog star which barks at her as she goes by; representing her being attacked by various birds and beasts (and fending them off with her broom); passing many moons, and finally, as she arrives at her destination, she is able to carry out the task in hand, cleaning the skies “which she findeth full loathsome by some reason of the manie & great spyders which have for long time bygone woven their webbes therein.” 

The rhyme dates back to as early as the 17th century, but Alquis’ enigmatic illustrations have become over time the most popular and recognisable depictions. Designed to be ‘read’ from the bottom up, it is likely that the engraver was inspired by George Cruikshank's famous 1849 horizontal panorama, The Toothache. 

‘Alquis’ was the  pseudonym for The Rev. Samuel Edward Maberly (1818–1848), an English clergyman, artist, and rower who served as the first president of the Oxford University Book Club in 1843. The V&A reports that Lewis Carroll's family owned a copy of Maberly's Pictorial Humpty Dumpty, and that it is highly probable that Maberly’s unique visual interpretation served as Carroll's direct inspiration for the character of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass.

A striking publication. Scarce complete, with Copac recording just the Oxford and V&A copies; no further copies on OCLC.   

SKU: 1800209