The Cooper Vignettes. From Drawings By F. O. C. Darley. India Proofs Before Letter.

Brown full leather, debossed borders and decorations, gilt titles, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers. A collection of 64 engravings commissioned by the publishers as illustrations for the works of James Fenimore Cooper. This folio edition is believed to be the first example of an attempt to employ the printing techniques used for bank notes in a published book. Each illustration includes a tissue guard separating it from an explanatory page of text. The engravings were originally released in eight separate portfolios limited to 500 impressions each. Our research locates examples of these individual portfolios, as well as volumes in which all eight have been bound together (as is the case here).