This book is titled "The Book of Ballads", edited by Bon Gaultier, illustrated by Doyle, Leech, and Crowquill, published in Edinburgh And London by William Blackwood in MDCCCLXVIII [1868] and printed by William Blackwood in Edinburgh, it's the Tenth Edition of this book of parodies that was first published in 1845, and it's in a fine binding by Kelly & Sons. The book has five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering, different characters on the spine (a turtle, a man in a hat, a chained dog, and a bearded gent) and "1868" in gilt at the bottom of the spine, a gilt-decorated cover with double gilt-fillet borders and a character in a fez hat in the center, decorative gilt-fillet borders on the front paste-down, a personal bookplate, and "Kelly & Sons, Binder" in gilt at the bottom of the front paste-down, olive green moire-type of endpapers, a pencilled note on the first blank flyleaf (the note describes the contents of the book), then an illustrated frontis followed by a tissue guard and the title page, three pages of Contents, two pages titled L''Envoy", 256 pages of text with black borders on each page, numerous illustrations throughout, a Napoleon-like figure on the back cover, all the edges are gilt, and the original spine and covers are bound in at the rear. Bon Gaultier was the pen name used by William Edmondstoune Aytoun and Sir Theodore Martin. Aytoun (1813 - 1865) was a Scottish poet and professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh, a lifelong contributor to the Edinburgh literary periodical Blackwood's Magazine, and a collector of Scottish ballads. Around 1841 Aytoun met Theodore Martin (1816 - 1909), a Scottish poet, biographer, and translator, and together they wrote a series of humorous articles on the fashions and follies of the time, which were interspersed with verses that later became popular as the Bon Gaultier Ballads. The name came from Rabelais' Prologue to Gargantua, and the book was a series of parodies on authors like Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Macaulay, and others. Alfred Crowquill was the pseudonym of Alfred Henry Forrester (1804 - 1872), an English author, illustrator and comic artist who showed an aptitude for writing at an early age and wrote for periodicals like Colburn's New Monthly, Bentley, and Punch magazine; he wrote short tales, songs, children's stories, and occasional burlesques, and he could draw as well - he specialized in caricatures and anthropomorphic animals with pen and ink. The book is 8vo. and measures 7 1/4 x 5 5/8 in. wide, with bright gilt, a tight binding and clean pages and text, light wear and rubbing on the front edge of the spine, light rubbing on the back side of the spine, with just a touch of shadows in the margins on a couple of pages, an attractive book overall, and an interesting collection of parodies and light poems from the 1800's. #104 #1635