Tab.443.a.6

Imprint: London. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, St Dunstan's House, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C. 1888.

Folio, quarter leather and red cloth binding (British Museum binding), with coat of arms stamped in blind on upper board, measuring 435 x 355 mm; top edge gilt; pp. iv, 150, [2]. The work contains 32 photogravure plates of scenes of rural life in Suffolk and Norfolk, mounted one to a page with accompanying descriptive letterpress. A further 15 small illustrations (not listed here) are printed with the text.In his introduction, Emerson writes of his intention in the illustrations 'to produce truthful pictures of East Anglian Peasant life Fisherfolk Life, and of the landscape in which such life is lived. With this end in view, I made ample notes whilst living in East Anglia, so that all the information on shrimping, trawling, smelting, anchor-fishing, poaching, ploughing, harvesting, fencing, brick-making, eel-picking, decoy-work, and the many other operations illustrated, was gained by actual observation, and afterward amplified and corrected by information gathered from the lips of specialists in various subjects ... I have endeavoured in the plates to express sympathetically various phases of peasant and fisherfolk life and landscape which have appealed to me in Nature by their sentiment or poetry. In short, I trust the complete work may form a humble contribution to a Natural History of the English Peasantry and Fisherfolk.' The preface also contains a note on the printing of the illustrations: 'The plates have been reproduced on copper from my original negatives by the Autotype Company, the Typographic-Etching Company, and Messrs. Walker & Boutall, to all of whom I owe sincere thanks for the trouble bestowed on the plates. These plates are, with one or two exceptions, untouched, so thay they may be relied upon as true to Nature. Of these plates, the Autotype Company reproduced Nos. 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 22, 23, 28, 30, and 32. The Typographic-Etching Company reproduced the Frontispiece, and Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, and 31; and Messrs. Walker & Boutall reproduced No. 3. The illustrations printed in the text were reproduced from my original photographs by the Typographic-Etching Company ... For the benefit of certain prejudiced persons who are prone to believe all things photographic will fade, I hereby assure them that these pictures will last as long as any etching or angraving.'