Cat Hey Diddle Diddle Story 1870's McLoughlin Bros. chromo color book

(Old Books, 19th Century Books, Children's Rhymes, Cats, Kittens, Juvenile Books, Illustrated Books).

Hey Diddle Diddle. [Aunt Louisa Big Picture Book series- Dish Ran Away with the SPoon, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Cow She Jumped over the Moon].
Published c. 1870's, New York by McLoughlin Brothers.
22 pages counting covers. Text in English. Illustrated throughout 6 plates plus covers. Includes a nice large chromo image of a cat playing a fiddle.

Publisher's color litho cat pictorial heavy paper wrappers, six chromolithographs within (Text and lithographed leaves all printed on recto only, blank versos).

Book is physically old and shows some signs of handling and time. Book is not new or in "new" condition.

I love this book and how defective it is and here's why. It has clearly been looked through and loved by children for so long that it eventually fell into disrepair, the cover broke into pieces and it needed to be mended. So some early youthful owner took it upon themselves to carefully repair the book. Unfortunately, it would seem they did not know how to align images properly. So what they did was repair the cover of this book in a manner that defies understanding or belief. Like, seriously, how can something like this happen? If you look closely at the repair job, you'll see what I'm referring to. 

As if that was not enough, they then apparently hand thread stitched the spine of all the loose leaves back together as a book and then, took a piece of linen and "carefully" glued it along the spine to cover this up and strengthen it. You have to love the spirit behind this effort. 

A charming and inherently fragile 19th century children's paper book in poor condition which has a great story to tell.

Binding well age worn, pics capture it well, rear cover defective and missing a lower corner chunk, book none-the-less remains overall attractive as an object.

Paper is toned, some edge tears, soiling, handling signs.

Still attractive on the shelf. The book displays a pleasing and unique age patina and is in overall nice antiquarian condition, the various assorted age flaws which are present seem to us easy to overlook or forgive. 

Please review photos for more detail showing how this book survives. The asking price reflects the condition based on our examination and 35+ years full time exposure to antiquarian books, maps and printed ephemera of all types and genres. Flaws seen and/ or described have been taken into account.

Book Measures c. 10 3/4" H x 9" W.

[B9387].