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First edition. Two quarto volumes (the bindings 11-5/8 x 9-1/2 x 2-1/2 in.; the pages 11-1/4 x 8-7/8 in.). Complete (except half-titles omitted) with the original 13 inserted engraved plates and two engraved text illustrations (the fore-piece and tail-piece of the Life); extra-illustrated with 151 additional inserted plates. Collates (vol. I) a2(?)-5(?), b1-5(?), c-e^4, B-3Z^4, 4A1-3: xlii, 498, [2], xlix, [1] pp., plus 8 inserted plates as listed and 84 additional inserted plates, and [2 ll. (binder's blanks)] front and rear; (vol. II), [A]2, B-2X^4, 2Y^2, 2Z^4, 4A-5Q^4: 1 l. (title recto), 348 pp., 1 l. (section title Correspondence recto, actually being pp. [1-2]), vii, [1], 3-311, [1] pp., plus 5 inserted plates as listed (one double-page) and 67 additional inserted plates, and [2 ll. (binder's blanks)] front and rear. Bound by Bayntun of Bath (its gilt stamp on lower front dentelles) in full red crushed levant morocco. Covers, cover edges and dentelles gilt-tooled in retrospective 17th-century panel style, spines gilt-tooled in six compartments with raised bands, red watered silk endpapers, all edges gilt, red silk marker ribbons (the ends frayed), maroon felt-lined chemises and full maroon morocco gilt-tooled slipcases. Extra-illustrated with the insertion of 151 additional plates of portraits, scenes, maps and other subjects, meticulously scaled by mounting, trimming or folding, and including preliminary, large-paper, before-letters and india proofs. The additional frontispiece portrait is, most unusually, a mounted original color photograph taken from the painting after which the engraved frontispiece portrait was designed. A full compilation of the inserted plates, executed in line and stipple engraving, etching and mezzotint, some in bistre and generally made within the span 1730-1830 (other than the additional photographic portrait frontispiece), is available on request. The condition is generally fine, the plates and their mounts bright and clean and with only scattered instances of faint foxing, the bindings exceptional, saving four particular condition exceptions: (i) shallow rectangular scratch and tiny terminal bump at lower corner of rear cover vol. I; (ii) almost imperceptible traces where the morocco bookplates now tipped in at the rear endleaves once adhered to the front silk pastedowns; (iii) unpredictable occurrences of offsetting from inserted plates or text blocks onto facing or trailing pages, generally none, sometimes faint or mild, sometimes moderate; (iv) the half-titles are omitted. (The signature registration is demonstrably eccentric at the first half-title. The inexplicable I, b5 suggests a half-folio [pi]1-2 in the first volume (as evident at II, 2Y^2), so that the collation would become [pi]^2, a^4, b^4, etc. (but one of these missing the half-title leaf). A binder might have chosen to omit the half-titles if the first was printed out of position and would have required a special stub for inclusion.) Among the sources of the additional plates in this set are Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, 1819 (its multifold St. Paul's Cross and Cathedral the sole plate found in the Folger Library's collection on-line), Bowyer's Historie Gallery plates of 1802-4 (with the sublime Monument of Mary), the plates from the original folio parts of Lodge's Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, 1823 ff. (with the rare "La Belle Stuart," the prototype for Britannia), Vertue's folio plates (14 in all) for The Heads of the Kings of England proper, 1736, and the folio plates by Vertue and Houbraken for the iconic The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain ["Birch's Heads"], 1743-1752 (including an ingenuously fitted Sir Isaac Newton). General references: The Grolier Club, One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature (New York, 1902), no. 75; John Drinkwater, Pepys His Life & Character (London, 1930), pp. 207-8. Provenance: Elizabeth Creve Caldwell (gilt-tooled leather bookplates).
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