Real Life in London; or, the Rambles and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq. and his Cousin, The Hon. Tom Dashall &c. Through the Metropolis; Exhibiting a Living Picture of Fashionable Characters, Manners and Amusements in High and Low Life. Embellished and Illustrated with a Series of Coloured Prints, Designed and Engraved by Messrs. Alken, Dighton, Brooke, Rowlandson, &c.

Notes

A scarce survival in original state of a publication of bibliographical complexity - an imitation of Piers Egan's extremely popular 'Life in London' with attractive hand-coloured plates. Very little can be said about it with certainty, starting with authorship: It is attributed by Halkett and Laing to Egan himself, while John Camden Hotten in the preface to an 1870 edition of 'Life in London' attributes it to Egan's great rival in early 19th-century sportswriting, John Badcock. 'Life in London' began publishing in monthly parts in January 1821, and the first part of this work followed it a few months later. The title-page of volume 1 here is dated 1821, that of the second volume 1824, and most of the plates are dated 1821 or 1822, with one in volume 2 dated 1824, but the matching labels on the spines indicate this set was sold together and call it a 'new edition'.
Tooley describes 'Real Life in London' as 'a book full of contrarities and difficulties for the bibliographer', and describes 3 editions dated 1821, 1823 and 1824, none of which quite match these volumes, although Tooley expresses a belief that there were more variations than accounted for in the 20-30 copies he consulted. Excepting the frontispieces and engraved title-pages, the plate lists call for 28 plates, to which Tooley adds 2 further, which 'though the work is complete without them, it is desirable to have them included'; this copy has one of them (depicting 'St George's Day') but not the other. As a final peculiarity, Tooley claims it was issued in publisher's cloth with gilt spines but this set is in publisher's boards with printed labels.