Costello (Dudley) Holidays with Hobgoblins:
and the talk of strange things
London, John Camden Hotten, 1861.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original blind-stamped purple cloth cloth decorated in gilt.
A miscellany of essays and stories by Dudley Costello (1803-65), Anglo-Irish soldier turned journalist and author, gathering together pieces on ghosts, witchcraft, dragons, griffins, salamanders, prophecy, alchemy and folk superstition. Includes plates by George Cruikshank, among them a satirical frontispiece titled ‘Shaving a Ghost’. Cruikshank’s contributions to the volume, including plates responding to ideas circulating in the wake of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, reflect the cultural atmosphere of the moment.
Out of stock