1823-34 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

Description

First Edition, Illustrated, Leather Binding, Signed Binding

A set complete in twelve volumes of Edmund Lodge's elaborate collection of eminent people in British history. Twelve volumes bound a smart half morocco over marbled cloth boards and gilt to the top edge signed Hatchards. Complete with half titles. 

Each biographical sketch is accompanied by a portrait of the person of interest. Originally published periodically in parts every other month, this is the first edition of the work, printed for Harding, Mavor and Lepard. 

The history of the country, in memoirs of the most illustrious English nobility and great officers of state. The content is selected from the highest authority and the portraits preserved in the gallery of the nobility, descendants of the people represented, or in the public collections. 

The illustrations are painted by the likes of Holbein, Rubens, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and other great masters. 

Including biographical sketches of King Henry the Eighth, Sir Walter Scott, Queen Anne Bullen, Sir Nicholas Carew, Francis Bacon, Queen Catharine Parr, Robert Dudley, James Butler, Lord Paget, Francis Drake, John Locke and many others. There are twenty biographies per volume. 

Each volume with its own title page, dated 1823-34. Volumes 2-4 with the imprint 'London: printed for Harding, Triphook and Lepard.' Volumes 5-8 'London: printed for Harding, Lepard and Co.' and volumes 9-12 'London: printed for Harding and Lepard.' The printer's colophon is printed on the verso of the half titles. 

Collated, complete with two hundred and forty portraits. 

With a complete collation to all volumes bound in volume one.

From the library at Julian Park, Hertfordshire, belonging to Audrey Pleydell-Bouverie. Audrey was the youngest daughter of an Anglo-American lumber and steel millionaire, sister to Edward James, a key figure in the Surrealist movement, and the illegitimate granddaughter of King Edward VII.

She was an English socialite known for her beauty and for charming various wealthy men, she was included in The Book of Beauty by Cecil Beaton. A patron of the arts, she assisted Viscount Carlow financially in the publication of limited editions of numerous works by leading literary figures such as T E Lawrence, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, and others. A hedonistic pursuer, she was recognised as one of the 'Bright Young Things'.