"Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain: Engraved from Authentic Pictures in the Galleries of the Nobility and the Public Collections of the Country. With Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Their Lives and Actions by Edmund Lodge". Published by William Smith, London, MDCCCXL (1840). Complete in ten volumes.

Hard boards, gold tooled leather [some wear; parts of spines missing, repairs]; volume 10 - missing back board and spine are substituted by the leather board and leather spine [see last two photos]; all boards are attached; 7.1/2" x 11"; 14.1/2" shelf space; marbled endpapers; all plates are present, some foxing plates and the pages next to the plates, each biographical essay consists of c.5 to 10 pages and has own pagination, all page edges are gilt, pages are near fine. Overall very good condition. See photos.

240 steel portraits by the best English engravers with biographical essays by Edmund Lodge. Each engraved plate is marked by the engraver, title, date of the creation of the original painting, location of the painting [name of the owner or gallery], and copyright "London. Published 1836 by Harding & Lepard. Pall Mall East."

"The finest collection of engravings ever complied."

240 portraits and biographical sketches include Locke, Newton, Cromwell, Wellington, Robert Boyle, Lord Nelson, Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Mary Stuart, Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, etc. The steel engravings are after the original portraits by Holbein, Vandyke, and others. This is an impressive collection.

These portraits were praised by Sir Walter Scott as "a collection which at once satisfies the imagination and the understanding, showing us how the most distinguished of our ancestors looked, moved and dressed, and how they thought, acted, lived, and died" (Allibone, 1120). [The portrait of Sir Walter Scott is included in this collection.]

Edmund Lodge (1756-1839) was English historian and long serving officer of arms at the College of Arms, a writer on heraldic subjects, and a compiler of biographies.

Lodge compiled and edited "Illustrations of British History, Biography, and Manners in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth and James I" (3 vols., 1791), which consisted of selections from the manuscripts of the Howard, Talbot and Cecil families preserved at the College of Arms. He also wrote Life of Sir Julius Caesar. He contributed text to Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, an elaborate work of which a popular edition is included in Bohn's Illustrated Library. His most important work on heraldry was The Genealogy of the Existing British Peerage (1832; enlarged edition, 1859). In The Annual Peerage and Baronetage (1827-1829), reissued after 1832 as Peerage of the British Empire, and generally known as Lodge's Peerage.

Package is heavy.

Rates vary per country - estimates only, we will adjust shipping rates with the invoice.

US: Media (c.2-8 days) --------- $52.50
Canada: Express (c.2-6 days) -- $290.50
World: Priority (c.2-8 weeks) --- $408.50