The Costume of Great Britain

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With Sixty Superb Hand-coloured aquatint engravings Uncommon. 1804 but 1819, small folio, title page with hand-coloured engraved vignette, preface and contents (2 leaves), and 60 hand-coloured aquatint plates, each with accompanying leaf of text from which the title of each plate is taken (some faint offsetting). Contemporary straight-grained full red morocco; spine and borders elaborately gilt and blind tooled, gilt title, a.e.g., 2 book labels to fpd (Sydney E Bates & William ?). (354*262 mm). (Tooley 388 later ed. Abbey, Life 430. Colas, 2447). The most important of William Miller's series of books on costume. Pyne's "Costume of Great Britain" is illustrated by sixty coloured aquatints designed and engraved by the author. Abbey notes that the book was first issued with title dated 1804 (but with the plates dated 1805 & watermarked earlier), and that the second issue of 1808 usually has the plates only partially coloured. This copy, dated 1804, but with the text watermarked 1819 & the plates 1821, has all the plates in the most desirable state with the backgrounds as well as the figures being coloured. Pyne was well known as an etcher and landscape painter, as well as a writer, notably as editor of "Royal Residences". This book of costumes is one of the few books which Pyne illustrated himself, and his convincing drawings of the British working class at work have made this the most lively of Miller's costume books. In the Most Desirable Format and Condition.