At first glance, Robert Pool and John Cash’s Views of the most Remarkable Public Buildings, Monuments and other Edifices in the City of Dublin (25.J.8) seems like many other eighteenth century books held in UCD Special Collections. Published in Dublin for ‘J. Williams, 21 Skinner-row in 1780′, the book guides the reader through the streets and history of Georgian Dublin, starting with Dublin Castle, and working its way around College Green, Dame Street, the Liffey and its bridges, and the city’s hospitals, churches, cathedrals and monuments.
As Conor Lucey has noted, this volume represents the ‘first sustained attempt, in both text and image, at rendering the city’s architecture legible for a variety of audiences, at home and abroad’, and pre-dates a far more better-known series of Dublin views, James Malton’s Picturesque and Descriptive View of the City of Dublin.[1] In addition to the frontispiece, showing the statue of William III on College Green, and two maps – the first a reproduction of John Speed’s view of the medieval city from 1610 and the second from 1780 – the original text contains twenty-eight engravings, drawn by Pool and Cash and engraved by either John Lodge (fl. 1774 – 1796) or Isaac Taylor the Elder (1730 – 1807).
The UCD Special Collections copy also has a bookplate, noting that it was among a collection presented to the Library in memory of Francis J. O’Kelley in 1951. There are some brief notations on the inside cover, noting that several of the views were listed Ephraim MacDowel Cosgrave’s catalogue of Dublin prints; that neither the artists or engravers are listed in Walter Strickland’s Dictionary of Irish Artists; and a listing of Lodge and Taylor’s respective engravings. These details, whether by O’Kelley or another former owner, show the care and interest they took in this publication.
Differing from many extra-illustrated books, this item has not been altered through the addition of extra pages and subsequent rebinding: rather, the extra-illustrator has pasted in the additional prints on the blank side of the original engravings, and on the back board. There is also one loose item inserted at the back of the book. It is clear, however, that careful thought was given to the placement as each additional image relates in some way to the Pool and Cash plate that precedes it.
The first additional image is placed in the book’s opening section on Dublin Castle. Two engravings by Pool and Cash appear in this section, showing the Castle Hall and Bedford Tower in the Upper Yard, and the Garden Front. George Petrie’s view of the ‘Great Court Yard, Dublin Castle’ has been placed on the reverse of the second engraving. George Petrie (1790 – 1866) was an Irish artist, antiquary and collector of Irish traditional music: in the early nineteenth century, his portraits and paintings were widely engraved and reproduced, included in a range of guidebooks and other publications. Engraved by Frederick Goodall, this print was published by Fisher, Son & Co., London, 1829. If you look carefully at the image below, you can see the plate mark or impression from Pool and Cash’s image on the other side of this page.
Just three pages later, another print by Petrie, this time showing College Street and the entrance to the former House of Lords, appears: engraved by ‘B Winkles’ (possibly Benjamin Winkles, fl. 1828 – 1842), this was also printed by Fisher, Son & Co., and is dated 1828. Unlike Pool and Cash’s simple line engravings, Petrie fills his streets with fashionable figures, street sellers, carts and carriages.
A final engraving, or at least one that can be firmly attributed to Petrie, appears later in Views of the most Remarkable Buildings: on the reverse of a view of Christ Church Cathedral, four additional images have been pasted in. Each image shows a funerary monument from the cathedral: Petrie’s, the caption notes, comes from Excursions throughout Ireland, a fact confirmed with Special Collection’s own copy of this book!
The other three images are smaller versions of Pool and Cash’s own engravings of the Prior’s Monument, Earl of Kildare’s Monument, and the Monument of Lord Bowes. Although a source for these hasn’t yet been identified, a collection of Pool and Cash’s engravings in the National Gallery of Ireland shows that these depictions of Dublin buildings were widely reproduced beyond their own volume, including in the European Magazine and Universal Geography.
There are several other additional images pasted into this book, but further research is needed to find out where they originated. While certainly not the most extravagant example of extra-illustration, this book and its bonus material offers an introduction to the practice in an Irish context.
This post was written by Katy Milligan, Library Assistant, UCD Special Collections
[1] Conor Lucey, ‘Views and Prospects: James Malton’s 18th-Century Vedute of Dublin’, in Sergio Onger, Anna Rosellini and Ines Tolic (eds), Images, Forms, and Narratives from the Global City, 2021, 384.