FORE-EDGE PAINTING. - John REEVE and Lodowicke MUGGLETON. A Volume of Spiritual Epistles: Being the Copies of Several Letters written by the Last Two Prophets and Messengers of God… collected by the great pains of Alexander Delamaine, the Elder. [London:] W. Smith, 1820. 4to (201 x 154mm.) Engraved portrait frontispiece, 'An Acrostic' dedication and verso list of subscribers, 6pp. 'Index to Letters'. (Offsetting to title, lacking initial blank?) Near contemporary red straight-grain full morocco, gilt borders, g.e., fore-edge painting (light rubbing to spine). Note: the painting shows an elaborate town square scene with thirteen buildings and a church as a backdrop to approximately thirty human figures with horses, carts, ladders etc. The Muggletonians were a small nonconformist Protestant group. In E. Thompson's words, Muggletonianism was 'a highly intellectual anti-intellectualism and, as such, remarkably well adapted for survival among the semi-educated, self-taught, self-confident London artisans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'. The last Muggletonian, Philip Noakes, died in 1979.