Melbourne Punch. Volumes 2, 3, 11 and 13

1856 – 1861. 26.5 cm. Vol. 2: iv, 208 pp.; Vol. 3: iv, 202 pp., [14 pp.] calendar; Vol. 11: iv, 208, 3 pp. Vol. 13: pp. 151 – 370. With very many wood-engraved illustrations, many of them full-page. All four volumes in contemporary (original?) half leather bindings with Detmold binder’s tickets. Some rubbing to bindings, edges worn, some insect abrasion to edges of textblocks, some sections evenly browned due to paper stock, only some occasional mild foxing here and there, overall a very nice and clean set inside in the original bindings. * ‘Nicholas Chevalier ‘who joined the staff of Punch in its second week […] was cartoonist from 1855 to 1861. […] Chevalier’s relations with his engraver, Calvert, were unusually friendly in a day when there was often a great deal of dissatisfaction on both sides. […] On 26 June 1856 Chevalier included himself in a small cartoon representing Mr. Punch holding a levé for the new members of Parliament. Tall and handsome, moustached and bearded, he crouches behind the crowd with pad and pencil, sketching while little shaggy Calvert stands on tip-toe peering over his shoulder. [Earlier} in the same year he shows himself with his folio under his arm, and Calvert with his block and a handful of gravers, following Punch with his printing machinery and staff to new premises in Collins Street Central” (Marguerite Mahood: ‘Melbourne Punch and its Early Artists’, In: The La Trobe Journal, No. 4, October 1969). Chevalier’s wood-engraved cartoons became one of the most popular features in Punch’ (ADB).