Edited by Walter Jerrold with grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley. 12mo., publisher’s cloth binding with gilt and red lettering and red illustration, pp. 192; 192; 192, with b/w illustrations and ‘grotesque’ ornamentation by Aubrey Beardsley; b/w engraved portraits of quoted authors, that of Lamb being Brook Pulham’s caricature originally titled ‘Aelia’ and etched in 1825. Gilt top edges. The Sydney Smith & R.B. Sheridan volume is a third impression dated 1894, the Samuel Foote & Theodore Hook and Charles Lamb & Douglas Jerrold volumes being first impressions dated 1893 and 1894 respectively. Bindings stained, rubbed and bumped, some fraying to extremities, hinges tender, the Lamb & Jerrold volume in worse condition than the other two, the stains being more apparent and the gilt and red more faded, the spine cracking in places; otherwise good copies. Three volumes of witticisms from famous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British intellectuals. Three further volumes, here lacking, were published with illustrations by Alice B. Woodward: Bon-Mots of the Eighteenth Century; and Bon-Mots of the Nineteenth Century.
