Humpty Dumpty by Aliquis

Last year I posted Edward Lear’s version of Humpty Dumpty, and was reminded of Aliquis’s Pictorial Humpty Dumpty (London: Tilt & Bogue, 1843), another “panorama” by the author of The Flight of the Old Woman Who Was Tossed Up in a Basket (London: D. Bogue, 1844; see it on nonsenselit.org, or buy it from Optical Toys).

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The Pictorial Humpty Dumpty consists of seven hand-colored engraved panels (3 1/2 x 9 1/2 in; 88 x 240 mm) in accordion format within cloth-backed, hand-colored boards opening to a total of sixty-three inches. Verses in English, Welsh, French, Hebrew, German, Latin, Italian, and Greek. This is the second issue, with the rhyme translated in six languages (the first, according to this page, lacked Italian and Welsh and was not coloured). Below are the best images of the whole I was able to find:

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“Aliquis” is generally considered the pseudonym of Samuel Edward Maberly, M.A. of Christ Church, Oxford, who was born on 11 April 1818, the youngest son of Joseph Maberly, esq. of Harley-street, and christened in Ambrosden, Oxon, on 11 June of that year. He was curate of Mells, Somerset, where he died on 21 May 1848, or (according to The Gentleman’s Magazine, 30 August 1848, p. 215) on 22 May.

The association of “Aliquis” and Maberly is, I think, based on his presumed authorship of “Floreat Etona. Eton sketch’d, a series of designs illustrative of an Eton life, as it was in my time,” first published in eight parts (Oxford: James Wyatt and son, 1841) and then repackaged as Eton sketched: a series of designs illustrative of an Eton life by Quis? (Oxford: Baxter, 1841; see Yale University Library Catalog). “Quis” is also mentioned as the author of “Eton as it is,” in The Victoria Magazine, Nov., Dec, 1864; Jan., 1865. Vol. IV. Nos. 19-21. Either the two “Quis” are different or the 1864-65 magazine is (re)printing twenty-year-old material.

The identification of the 1841 “Quis” with Maberly is mentioned in an article in the Keats-Shelley Review, vol. 8, p. 159:

Illustrations of Life at Eton in the 1830s
These sketches by ‘Quis’ provide a facinating insight into the boys’ daily life at Eton in the early part of the nineteenth century. Although published in 1841, some thirty years after Shelley left, they record incidents and scenes that he would have found familiar from his own time. Most of the scenes show life in the early 1830s when Dr Keate was still Head Master. ‘Quis’ is thought to be Samuel Maberly who was a boy at Eton between 1830 and 1836.

The above is the only passage available on Google Books and I have not been able to find any other references; neither have I seen the sketches of Eton life, and cannot judge whether they resemble those of the two concertina books.

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