Sir Allen Young

.Sir Allen Young (1827–1915) was an English master mariner and explorer, best remembered for his role in Arctic exploration including the search for Sir John Franklin.

Chomolithography, 265x395mm, original proof impression. 

“The second versions of the Vanity Fair caricatures are the proof prints or proofs before lettering. [First versions are the original watercolors; third versions are the widely available weekly/album prints.]   Produced to verify the colours and lines of the lithograph, no more than twenty copies were printed. Not true many more than that. These prints have no captions or dates, or other descriptive type, and the magazine bound them in numbered albums, in green leather with gilt tooling.  They were offered for sale, and also awarded as prizes in the magazine’s acrostic contests.  At the front of each volume is a printed note from Vanity Fair giving the number of the proof volume and the numbered volume in the series. However these volumes were "broken" to sell individually and one never sees the complete volume. The quality of the colours in the proof prints, their clarity of line and detail and their scarcity make them of considerable interest to the collector.”

Roy T. Matthews and Peter Mellini, In “Vanity Fair”, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 203.