A Tale of a Whale.

/ Written and illustrated by “Norroy”. London : Dean & Son, [1884]. [BOUND WITH] The Strange Adventures of a Carp. By “Norroy”, author of A Tale of a Whale. London : Dean & Son, [1884]. Two works bound in one, octavo (190 x 145 mm), publisher’s cloth-backed pictorial boards (rubbed and with light edge wear), pp. 19; 19; illustrations throughout (some full-page); contents clean and sound, a very good example.

These charmingly illustrated tragi-comic stories in verse are both first editions, which – although also issued separately – are here bound together in one volume by the publisher.

“Norroy” was the pseudonym used by H. F. Browne, a Canadian illustrator with a playful eye for detail and a wickedly sharp wit. The first story is a biographical account of a whale, who is hunted by whalers and killed ‘Dead as a door nail’. (His remains, however, can be seen in the local history museum and the stays of a bodice). The second narrates the adventures of a carp, as told to the author by a cod ‘Of high renown and race’. The carp meets a similarly sad fate to that of the whale: of course – he is caught and eaten.