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Author Archives: mercedes-c
Board games
At the moment, I am cataloguing Douce’s prints of games, sports, and popular pastimes. The reason why Douce collected these images can be found in the introduction to his friend Joseph Strutt’s The Sports and Pastimes of the People of … Continue reading
Posted in Collections and Collectors, Games
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Dickens Year
We are in Dickens Year: on 7 February, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth. A copy of Douce’s The Dance of Death bearing the bookplate of Charles Dickens can be found in the Special Collections of … Continue reading
Posted in Dance of Death, Literature, Lithography, Prints, Satirical prints
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Christmas gambols
On 23 December 1826, the author of an anonymous piece entitled ‘Christmas customs’ and published in The Mirror thus reflected: It is a season the most cheerles; the clouds and vapours increasing, and the chilliness of winter’s near approach, accelerating … Continue reading
Posted in Carols, Everyday life, Music
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Douce’s winter collection
The first snow this year fell in Oxford last night! Douce’s winter print collection has everything one may need to make the most of this season. From how to travel in style… … to what to wear to enjoy winter … Continue reading
Posted in Everyday life, Prints, Seasons
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Knavery stalks through the land
Douce’s interest in images of fools and jesters was not limited to his research for the ‘Dissertation on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare’, published as part of his Illustrations of Shakespeare and of ancient manners (London, 1807). Plates like … Continue reading
Posted in Fools, Letters, Satirical prints
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Douce’s ‘Portraits of English literati’
Douce’s collection also includes a large number of portraits, most of which seem to have been either given to him by friends and acquaintances, or cut from newspapers and magazines. As Douce knew many of the sitters personally, sometimes he … Continue reading
Modern life is rubbish
The quadrille-craze mentioned in my previous post on William Hawkes Smith’s music-sheet was also one of the subjects depicted by George and Isaac Robert Cruikshank in their illustrations to Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1821). In Egan’s social comedy, the … Continue reading
Posted in Broadsides, Letters, London, Satirical prints
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Douce trivia
In 1818, Francis Douce’s sister-in-law, Maria, widow of Charles Luther Watson, married Christopher Salter, from West End House in Buckinghamshire. The Salter family had owned West End House in Stoke Poges since the early eighteenth-century, when it was let to … Continue reading
Posted in Poetry
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Witches and goblins
Witchcraft is an important theme in Douce’s collection of prints and drawings. It has not been difficult, therefore, to find a few appropriate prints among his many images of witches, diableries, ghosts and goblins to celebrate Halloween: This etching, which … Continue reading
Posted in Prints, Witchcraft
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Quadrilling
This music-sheet kept among Douce’s prints on dancing is not just an example of popular music in the age of bonnets, but also a clever and mildly amusing satire on contemporary mores: Under the title Quadrille; a favourite song, the … Continue reading
Posted in Fashion, Lithography, Music, Satirical prints
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