BOOK CUTTING IDENTIFICATION THOUGHTS

David Pickup's Mystery Book Cutting

It’s definitely not the 1793 3rd edition of Stephen Martin Leake’s An Historical Account of English Money. The plate images are different.

Leake 3rd Edition

My copy of Leake’s 1726 1st edition (anonymous but with the usual ”Printed for W. Meadow at the Angel in Cornhill”) is missing several of the plates. Some of the 1st edition plates are the same as appear in the 3rd edition. Others were re-engraved for use in the 3rd edition and still others were completely re-done for the 3rd edition. However, all are similar in style/format.

Beyond this, the obverse/reverse images either touch or overlap slightly (obverse image on top) in both editions. On the handful of coins that have a connecting bar, it’s a very short one made up of two lines.

The likely plate for the Portcullis type coin is missing in my Leake 1st edition, but would probably not have included such an elaborate title.

Taking all this into account, I doubt that the 2nd edition of Leake would have had the image, but I’ve never actually SEEN a copy of the second.

The image isn’t from Thomas Snelling’s 1769 Miscellaneous Views of the Coins Struck by the English Princes in France, Counterfeit Sterlings, Coins struck by the East India Company, etc..... The one in Snelling is very different.

Initially, Snelling was my first suspicion.

So....we’ve got something of a tricky one here. The coin was well-known by the 18th Century, so it didn’t warrant the elaborate title if was included in a plate of many coins in a numismatic work.

It’s also not from Bishop Fleetwood’s Chronicon Preciosum 1745, the image is different

Nor is it from Evelyn’s Numismata 1697, in which an East India coin is mentioned but not illustrated.

By the 19th century, the style of coin illustration in Britain changed, so the cut’s unlikely to be that late.

My guess is that it could be an in-line plate in a page of text. It’s possible the book may not have been a numismatic one.

Of course, another reader will know exactly from which book the plate has been cut - rendering my guess immaterial.

To read the complete article, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JULY 22, 2018 : Query: Book Cutting Identification Sought (http://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n29a17.html)

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