James Puckle (1667?-1724) published this collection of "characters" in 1711 which ran to several editions until the mid-Nineteenth century. A microcosmography in the Theophrastian sense with an enormous popularity in England. This de-luxe edition with wooden engravings by John Thompson, Branston, Besbit and other Bewick pupils after the designs by Thurston totalled only 735 copies and was printed by John Johnson, the master-printer and later author of "Typographia" (1824) right after he had left the Lee Priory Press; the style of his Puckle's Club very much resembles the Lee Priory imprints. This volume also contains the debut as a book illustrator of William Harvey (p.56), who had just left Thomas Bewick, his master, to become the pupil of Haydon, the painter, in London. Chatto & Jackson (p632) are of the opinion that several of the wooden engravings by John Thompson for this volume are "indisputably the best among the very many excellent cuts which have been engraved in England within the last twenty years".
