Explorations in the Sit-Tee Desert: Being a Comic Account of the Supposed Discovery of the Ruins of the London Stock Exchange Some 200 Years Hence.

GOULD Sir Francis Carruthers (1880.)

£550.00  [First Edition]

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First edition. Folio. 10 pp., five full page illustrations and numerous in-text illustrations throughout. Original decorated cloth, blocked in maroon and gold, decorated endpapers (extremities lightly rubbed, slight crack to front hinge, but firmly holding, otherwise a remarkably fine copy). London, Unwin Brothers.

Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844–1925), cartoonist and stockbroker, was born at Barnstaple, Devon, on 2 December 1844. Gould began work at a bank at the age of 16, before making his way to London and the Stock Exchange in 1865. After working in a stockbroker's office, he himself became a member of the stock exchange, operating first as a broker and later as a jobber. Gould found his greatest love in drawing, however, and found the Stock Exchange the perfect site for this hobby, where, he said, 'there was every variety of personality and very marked individuality among the members.' His work was popular with friends and colleagues, and often issued in private circulation (DNB). Gould’s skill soon led him away from banking to a full-time career in illustration, this time in the political arena. It would be his cartoons supporting the Liberal party and lampooning the ruling Unionists that would earn him his knighthood with the Liberal return to power in 1906. Despite his strong political views, his work maintained a light touch, viewing his subjects as objects of humour rather than derision. This same approach is evident (though still hugely entertaining) in his parody of the City as found in Egyptian ruins 'some 2000 years hence.'

Stock Code: 231840

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