Mottled brown calf binding with red and black title plates, gilt decoration, raised banding and lettering on the spine. Gilt decorative edge line on both boards.

The paste down has the bookplate of Anne Jane Abercorn, Marchioness of Abercorn.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feel and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

FIRST EDITION: the best example yet seen

Complete in three volumes: With a portrait frontispiece of Foote to volume I.

Condition Report: Just great.  Overall: Very Good Indeed

Samuel Foote was an English actor, playwright and theatre manager, notable for his gift for mimicry that was often directed at his peers, making him both a figure of delight and fear on the London stage. Moreover, Foote was also renowned for the loss of his leg in a riding incident in 1766, that he turned into a comedic opportunity in his works “The Devil Upon Two Sticks”  and ” The Lame Lover”.

Samuel Foote (January 1720 – 21 October 1777) was a British dramatist, actor and theatre manager from Cornwall. He was known for his comedic acting and writing, and for turning the loss of a leg in a riding accident in 1766 to comedic opportunity.
While riding with Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany in 1766, he was thrown from his horse and the injury cost him his leg. Even in this state, he continued to act and as possible compensation for his injury was granted a license to legally operate the Haymarket Theatre. He produced a summer season of "legitimate plays" in 1767, engaging Spranger Barry and his wife to perform. He bought the theatre outright and remodelled the interior the same year and continued to operate the theatre until he was forced to give up his patent to George Colman the Elder the following year. Near London, Foote lived and wrote in his much-loved villa, “The Hermitage”, in North End village in the Parish of Fulham. He died on 21 October 1777 in Dover, while en-route to France. Foote’s satires are based on caricatures of characters and situations from his era. His facility and wit in writing these earned him the title “the English Aristophanes”; While, often, his subjects found his
literary jabs just as humorous as his audiences, they often both feared and admired him.