Smith, [Albert] | A satirical take on Victorian social conventions

Smith, Albert

The Natural History of the Gent. London: David Bogue, 1847 

24mo (130 x 83 mm). Numerous in-text illustrations, two leaves of advertisements at end; minor toning, one or two instances of foxing, a minor finger soiling, some faint offsetting of illustrations onto text. Three-quarter green morocco and gray-green paper-covered boards, bound by Chatelin, spine with raised bands and six compartments, second gilt lettered, others with repeat gilt floral motif, top edge gilt, blue endpapers; extremities rubbed, light damp staining, one or two scratched to upper board, some sunning, minor loss to head of spine, remnants of label to front pastedown, offsetting to front free endpaper, front free endpaper detached, old catalog entry pastedown to flyleaf.

The Hoe copy of Albert Smith’s The Natural History of the Gent. 

“We trust the day will come—albeit we feel it will not be in our time—when the Gent will be an extinct species…” — Albert Smith, The Natural History of the Gent 

The Natural History of the Gent is a satirical description of the social conventions that governed “gentlemen” of the Victorian era. "Initially a surgeon, in the 1840s Smith became a popular journalist and humorist. He was an early contributor to Punch and a regular contributor to Richard Bentley's Miscellany, in whose pages his first and most successful book, The Adventures of Mr Ledbury, appeared in 1842" (National Portrait Gallery). 

REFERENCES

National Portrait Gallery, “Albert Richard Smith,” accessed 31 May 2026: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp06299/albert-richard-smith

PROVENANCE 

Robert Hoe (book label to front pastedown)