Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

With illustrations. vols i and ii. second edition.

Item Description

TWO VOLUMES. 8vo. 8 x 5.5 inches. Vol. I, 395 pp.; Vol. II, 396 pp. Title pages and tissue guard captions in red and black. Bound in original red cloth, gilt, with decorative borders on front boards enclosing gilt fleur-de-lis blocks. Top edges gilt. Extremities worn, including corners and heads and tails of spines, which are sunned, and have a few small stains. Front hinges of Vol. I starting to crack; otherwise a very good set with clean interiors. Illustrated by 20 photogravure plates with captioned tissue guards, including two frontispieces. US edition of a work of collective biography. The twenty British and French subjects include the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Rochester, William Congreve, Beau Nash, Lord Hervey, the Earl of Chesterfield, the Duc. de Saint-Simon, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, Horace Walpole, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Beau Brummell and the Rev. Sydney Smith. The work of Katherine Thomson (1797-1862), society hostess and biographer, with the assistance of her son, John Cockburn Thomson. The first edition was published 1860.