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40 volumes octavo 9 1/2 x 6 inches, handsomely leather bound in later half red morocco, all edges gilt, some slight sun fading. Bound from the parts, some occasional trimming or tightly bound plates plus very occasional toning or offsetting but consistent with such a long 20 year periodical. Illustrated with the 1491 engraved plates (mostly hand coloured) as called for by the monthly plate lists and the two bibliographies Abbey and Tooley (plus the anomalies listed therein). An awkward collation which sometimes varies slightly. The three series as follows - FIRST SERIES January 1809 to December 1815, 14 volumes each with a copper engraved title, includes 63 woodcuts containing 2 or more fabric or paper swatches- and with all the anomalies listed in the bibliographies Abbey and Tooley - particularly the Penitentiary plate and the unlisted plate of needlework in volume 7 are present. Plus 24 leaves of advertisements at the end of volume 14 - not mentioned in the bibliographies. SECOND SERIES January 1816- December 1822, 14 volumes each with a wood engraved title and 4 samples similar to swatches. Includes the unlisted bank note and a bis plate. THIRD SERIES Jan 1823- Dec 1828, 12 volumes each with an engraved title (with various decorative arts related cartouches). Each of the 240 months include 2 hand coloured fashion plates (occasionally just hats) so 480 hand coloured fashion plates. A VERY GOOD, CAREFULLY COLLATED, SET. Provenance: Gother Mann (1747-1830), army officer and military engineer; his ownership inscriptions on titles of the first 10 volumes, and possibly his annotations on a few plates. First edition of Ackermann's influential, authoritative publication on taste and fashion: an extraordinarily ambitious project providing a contemporary pictorial record of social life in early nineteenth-century Europe, and one of Britain's earliest publications to use lithography. Issued in parts, each volume is devoted to series that include ladies' fashion, new developments in furniture designs or architecture, views of London emporiums and English country houses, foreign views of cities and countries, and, in the early issues, allegorical woodcuts with actual samples of British-made textiles and papers used in fashion and decoration. As a result of having been preserved in book form, these samples remain as fresh and unfaded as when they were first produced. The first series (until 1815) is an extraordinary document of the Napoleonic wars and French cultural influence on fashion and style in Regency England. The Repository also depicts for the first time in a magazine for the general public technological advances such as gas lamps, steamboats, and an early version of a bicycle. The illustrations provided Ackermann with much material which he republished in various subsequent works. John Buonarotti Papworth's Select views of London (1816), Rural residences (1818), and Picturesque tour form Geneva to Milan (1820), for example, all appeared for the first time in the Repository. Bibliographies- Abbey Life 212;Tooley pp.25-47.
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