The beauties of England and Wales: or original delineations, topographical, historical, and descriptive, of each county. Embellished with engravings
London: Vernor, Hood, & Sharpe; Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme; Cuthell & Martin; W. J. & J. Richardson; J. & J. Arch; J. Harris; and B. Crosby, 1801-15. Titles and imprints with slight variation. 18 volumes in 25, thick 8vos, 728 engraved plates (including 2 duplicates) of a total 733 as listed in the various plate lists (see below); (note that a copy offered on-line contains only 627 plates; another offering provides no count of the plates at all); original rose paper-covered boards, cream paper shelfback, blue printed labels on spines; volume XIII, part 1 with a tear at the top of the spine with loss to the shelfback and part of the blue paper label; volume VIII with joints cracked and the boards holding by cords; a number of other minor cracks, chips, stains, etc., but on the whole a very good set, entirely bound in the original boards, of a most complicated publication. Full details for each volume are available on request, and much of the following from copious notes by a previous owner. The work evolved through four different iterations. First, it would have been printed in unfolded, unsewn sheets. Second, it appeared in parts, in printed wrappers. Third it, appeared in boards. Fourthly, and finally, it would have been fully collated and bound for permanent use. It is in this last form that the book is best known, and it is not uncommon as such. This work, which appeared in 15 volumes expanded into 25, was published between 1801 and 1815. It offered an illustrated, county-by-county narrative based on dense and compendious research-historical, antiquarian, topographical, genealogical, and architectural. It was financed by subscribers, although no subscribers list was ever included in the publication. Many of these subscribers doubtless had the satisfaction of seeing their names, houses and estate mentioned in the work. Some received flattering dedications, others acknowledgment and thanks in the introductory materials included in successive volumes. The previous owner has noted that "the present copy, to be complete, should offer all of the illustrations. It does, and it does not. The first indication of the number of illustrations being offered with the text comes on the labelling of volumes. The printed (blue) labels on Volumes I-XI and volumes XII-XVIII differ in size and textual information. The labels on the first 11 (actually 15 volumes, since volume X expands into 5 separate volumes) are twice the size of those on the remaining volumes. They record the work’s title, the volume number, the counties covered, the number of engravings in the volume, and the volume's price. The smaller labels give only the title of the work. In 7 volumes the number of the illustrations designated on the label is the same as that found in the book itself. In 8 volumes it is not. In 5 of those 8 there is a deficit of eleven plates; in the remaining three there is a surplus of six. In neither case do we know, by title, which the plates are. Figures alone can suggest the labor behind the work. It required 10 different author/editors (other than Brayley and Britton already mentioned these included: Joseph Nightingale; J. N. Brewer; J. Evans; John Hodgson; Francis Charles Laird; Frederic Shoberl; John Bigland; and Thomas Rees). They were supplied with information by many dozens, even hundreds, of contributors and correspondents, drawn from every county covered. Sixteen publishers, whether individually or in partnerships, were engaged. For the illustrations, over 130 artists and over 50 engravers were employed-and these are minimum figures: they take no account of the numerous variants (or errors) in the spelling and initialing of names, which once sorted out could point to a higher count. The work began to swell and expand as it progressed, most notably in the section on London and Middlesex: this started in 1807 as a single volume, and by 1816 had reached its conclusion in four volumes (X; X Part II; X Part III; X Part III Continuation; and X Part IV). Beneath the broad tranquil surface of its production, there often swirled the currents of sharp editorial and production disputes, which doubtless delayed the work’s progress. To our knowledge there is no extant copy of the work, in whole or in part, in sheets. and it is hardly to be expected that it would have been retained in that form. It is almost as rare in its wrappered periodical form. The Literary Hub mentions only one library with (odd) parts in printed, stitched, blue wrappers-the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Parts of that same copy are bound in boards. Whether the present copy, fully in boards, is unique, requires further research. The interest of the present copy is the window it offers into the long birthing of the work. Like many works bound in boards it offers material that was almost always discarded when a work was finally bound in some permanent covering. In the present case, as they received the part in wrappers, subscribers were “recommended to have the Work done up in Boards only, as at the conclusion it will be necessary to unsew it, to arrange the Prints” (I, Advertisement). No evidence remains to indicate who put this boarded set together, or when. Was it assembled from individual wrappered parts? Did the publishers put it together over time as the materials accumulated volume by volume? Was it assembled and offered whole when the publication had actually concluded? One can add an even more detailed question: at what point were the printed blue labels that are on each volume produced-in the course of the work’s production, or only at its conclusion? One of the main challenges for those producing the work was to retain subscriber and purchaser loyalty over the fifteen years of the work’s growth. Whether in the form of prefatory Advertisement, Address, or Remarks, intended for subscribers and the public, the writers and publishers did all they could to keep readers informed of, and loyal to, the work’s progress. We can infer from the present copy that the work’s periodical issue was irregular and unpredictable. The strain of preparing copy by announced dates, and the risk of disappointing subscribers and other buyers if they were not met, were clearly great. We can follow in this boarded copy the appearance of each issue by the dates, when they occur, that are given at the foot of the page to the various lead signatures to each part. This first of these occurs in Volume VI, where signatures A3-C, are dated Nov 1805; D-F Dec. 1805; G-K Feb. 1806; L-P March 1806; Q-T April 1806; and its two concluding signatures U and X, June 1806. The pattern we can see here-the irregular time-table of the issues’ appearances, and the variation, sometimes considerable, of the length of those issues-is characteristic whenever the dates of the issues are recorded. In Volume X, Parts II, and only in this segment, is there a further refinement: the days of the month are included. For the most part, however, the only indicator of the start of a new periodical issue is the number of the volume in which it is appearing. In the last two volumes, XVII and XVIII, even these volume number markers are dropped. The part issues in wrappers were, perhaps, no more regular in appearance: while clearly marked with volume and number, some carry no date of issue. The variations in these practices reflect the vagaries of sustaining the publication's schedule, meeting announced deadlines, and satisfying subscribers’ expectations. If the appearance of the works text sometimes seems halting, the order in which the prints were issued with the growing text was almost random. The parts in wrappers (to judge from University of Wales examples) carried 3 prints each. The volumes of the present boarded set carry between 16 (Volume I) and 39 (Volume VII) prints each, the usual number hovering between the mid-twenties and low thirties. The order in which these prints first appeared suggests a calculated retailing ploy. In any given boarded volume the narrative remains focused on the one or more counties it covers. This is quite otherwise with the illustrations. Some do relate to the text at hand, but most were intended for quite different county volumes. For example, the text of the present boarded Volume X covers three counties-Monmouthshire, Norfolk, and Northamptonshire. There are thirty plates. Of these, ten relate to Norfolk, but there are a further eleven needed to complete Norfolk’s full complement of twenty-one illustrations. There is also one plate related to Monmouthshire, leaving ten to go, and one to Northamptonshire, leaving six yet to be supplied. The remaining eighteen plates relate to a further fourteen different counties. The same lack of congruence is found in the wrapper issues: the three plates each part carried are not necessarily connected to segments of text with which they appear. There is a double retail advantage to this apparent lack of synchronization. In the first place, it lowered the risk of losing customers who, having acquired both the full text and complete illustrations for the county or counties in which they were interested, might simply have dropped their subscription for the remainder of the set. Secondly, illustrations alone offered their own allure, a view of places yet to come and to be explained with descriptive narrative. From their initially random appearance, prints, and customers, had to wait until the end of the part issue appearance for the prints to be distributed appropriately in, and coordinated with, the text. Possibly the greatest challenge to anyone involved in the publication was that faced by the binders of a completed set. The Directions given to them combine the precise and the optional. For example, at one point we are told that any plate might be chosen out of those accompanying a volume and used as a frontispiece. On the other hand, we are told that the engraved title-page vignettes (which are included in the count of plates, and which are in all, save one, of the boarded volumes) can be discarded, as superfluous, if the binder so chooses. If these were discarded, then the count of plates in such a set would be less than the total of 733. The numerous instructions to binders, all of which would be discarded once the set was fully and finally bound, give us a vivid and working insight into the construction of the final product. They also suggest, perhaps, that no two copies of the work will be exactly the same. Even when the final volumes had appeared, it was not fully formed. Three years after its completion, a further volume appeared, Introduction to the . . . Beauties of England and Wales (1818), by J. Norris Brewer, in which he added new material, corrected the old, and published a series of maps, that had been promised, to accompany the earlier text. Item #67247
Price: $12,500.00
