May (Phil) Artist's sketchbook with over 80 original drawings, sketches, and studies from life, 135 pp. with over 80 featuring sketches, predominantly of people, but others of bar interiors, sketches of movement, dancing, caricatures, studies of animals, etc., black chalks, pen and ink, coloured chalks, wash, a few with annotations and one dated ''87', some inscribed 'used', all on uniform buff wove paper, each album leaf approx. 240 x 182 mm (9 1/2 x 7 1/4 in), front free endpaper with sketches and inscribed 'Phil May/ "The Graphic"/ Strand/ London', some rubbing to chalks and surface dirt throughout, slightly rough edges, a few leaves with tape support to stitching, original half morocco with green cloth covers, the upper cover inscribed 'Phil May/ The Graphic/ London/ 1893', rubbed and slightly worn, preserved in dark-green crushed morocco pull-top slipcase by Riviere & Son, spine gilt, upper section of spine with small nick, minor rubbing, 8vo, [circa 1880s and 1890s]

⁂ A coherent and expertly executed collection of rapid sketches, alongside some rather more considered and worked-up character studies, showing London life in the late 19th century, and possibly the influences of Paris and Charles Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life.