1864.]. 8vo, 155 x 120mm, chromolithograph leporello, 147 x 107mm extending out to 2560 x 107mm, printed on one side only and comprising 24 panels (‘L’ and ‘J’ on one panel, ‘W’ omitted; ’N’ printed in reverse; with text below each image in French and English; lightly browned due to paper quality, a couple of small tears at folds, with a couple of small holes to inner gutter of final panel; mounted within embossed paper-covered boards, with pictorial label showing theatrical characters and a magic lantern, spine repaired, with some loss of the border around printed label, inner spine with loss of paper, extremities rubbed and light worn; still an appealing and striking copy. A scarce and extensive alphabet panorama in French and English, with a striking series of illustrations designed to imitate magic lantern slides, and featuring a host of ‘amusing’ and grotesque characters. The leporello is comprised of 24 panels, with the letters ‘L’ and ‘J’ on one panel, and ‘W’ omitted. The ’N’ has been printed in reverse. Each colourful character is placed within a solid black background, and includes a screaming baby carried off by devils, a devilish looking magician, a set of animated dentures, and a celebrity in the guise of the gymnast and acrobat Jules Léotard (1838-1870). Whilst intended to be amusing, it must be said that one or two of the images have racial and antisemitic overtones.
According to Lawrence Darton, the bibliographer of the Darton publishing houses, the foundering Darton and Hodge firm may have tried to liven up its offerings by issuing Cordier’s series of bilingual panoramic alphabets. The colophon of Plon in Paris at the end of the panorama suggests that French editions were imported and new English cover title labels added. ‘Mainly pictorial, with lively colour-printed illustrations and captions in English and French, each in the form of a long accordion-folded strip (’upwards of 11 feet in length’, as advertisements put it), contained in bright, attractive, embossed paper boards with gilt trimming, they were something quite new to most English children. Because of their fragility, few copies have survived’ (The Darton: an annotated checklist, p. XLVV, and see p. 367 for ‘Fantasmagoria’).