The Life of Napoleon, A Hudibrastic Poem in Fifteen Cantos, by Doctor Syntax.

[COMBE, William]. Illustrated by George Cruikshank [Napoleon Bonaparte].

Item Number: 142506

London: Printed for T. Tegg, M. Cheapside, Wm. Allason, 1815.

First edition, mixed state of Combe’s satirical verses on the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, illustrated with plates by George Cruikshank. Octavo, bound in full crushed crimson levant morocco by Root & Son with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, triple gilt ruling and central Napoleonic imperial eagle to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and wide gilt and stamp-signed inner dentelles, top edge gilt, watered silk endleaves, illustrated with a hand-colored engraved and aquatint frontispiece, hand-colored engraved and aquatint vignette title-page, and 28 hand-colored engravings with aquatint by George Cruikshank. In near fine condition. A very handsome binding.

This verse biography of Napoleon has been attributed to William Combe, famous in his day as the author of the ‘tours’ of Doctor Syntax, but is more likely by an anonymous writer seeking to exploit Combe’s success. It was illustrated with thirty engravings by the young George Cruikshank, whose career as a graphic satirist up to that point had been punctuated by repeated abusive caricatures of Napoleon. The engravings follow Napoleon’s progress from his time at military college to his abdication in 1814, and dwells particularly on the massacres, murders, and other iniquities with which his name was associated in Britain. The series of prints concludes with a sunset view of the former Emperor disembarking on Elba in 1814; at the time of publication it would have been seen as marking the final episode in Napoleon’s story.