A Tour Through Paris by [William Sams] - [1824]: illustrated with twenty-one coloured plates

Very good complete suite of 21 aquatint views of Paris in the years of the Bourbon Restoration.

Lively collection of Parisian scenes showing the sights (parks, bridges, catacombs, morgue, swimming pool, etc.), the people (tradesmen, famous characters, itinerant merchants, street performers) and events (festivals, military rituals, religious processions). A good selection of post-Napoleonic costume too.

First published in parts in oblong folio with the title A Tour of Paris in 1822, this is the first collected edition with letterpress and the title A Tour Through Paris. Plates dated 1822 and 1824.

The illustrations are unsigned but accredited to the French artist Victor Auver. Four plates previously appeared in Richard Brinsley Peake's The characteristic costume of France, (1816): Itinerants on the Boulevards, Street Characters (as Water Carriers), The Catacombs and La Morgue.

The plates depict: Distribution of wine on the morning of St. Louis; The voitures (coach-drivers) of Versailles; The blind man (organist) of the Pont des Arts; Dancers on stilts in the Champs-Elysées; Office of nurses (country women who wetnurse for money); Porters and Fishwomen revelling round the statue of Henri IV (at Les Halles); Interior of a swimming school; Parisians reading the public prints in the garden of the Tuileries; The Catacombs; Chamber of Deputies; Street characters (water carrier, organ grinder, stocking mender); Itinerants on the Boulevards (tisane seller, porter, print seller, etc.); Military degradation in the place Vendome (criminal soldiers cashiered from the army); The juggler (magician) of the Château d'eau; La Morgue; The flower-market; The Meridian of the Palais Royal; The Charcoal porters (in a brawl); Procession of the Fête-Dieu Parish Saint Germain L'Auxerrois; Garde Nationale (drunken guardsmen with an attractive cantiniere); and Promenade of Her Serene Highness the Duchess of Berri.

William Sams published prints and books, operated the Royal Circulating Library, and sold tickets to the theatre from his shop at 1 St James' Street, Piccadilly.

Half green leather binding, six raised bands with gilt title and tooling on spine, scuffed and chipped, marble boards worn and chipped, endpapers with some spotting, all plates with tissue guards, a few faint spots to text pages and tissue guards, but all aquatints clean with good impressions and superb hand-colour.