Sketches in London ... Second edition
James Grant, a London newspaper editor, collected his reportage on the city's courts, prisons, gin shops, penny theatres and street crowds in Sketches in London, issued in a second edition by Thomas Tegg in 1840 for a general reading public. The plates are etched interiors and night streets crowded with small figures — an orator haranguing a seated bench, drinkers under a brick vault, a brawl upsetting chairs and bottles, a moonlit alley of chimneys — with loose hatching, pooled shadow and clear silhouettes of top hats and skirts usable as crowd groups, period costume reference or grainy vignette backgrounds.
