The History and Antiquities of the City of York.

The History and Antiquities of the City of York, From its Origin to the Present Times. Illustrated with Twenty-Two Copper Plates.

Vol. 1 with folding frontispiece map and 17 plates (five of them folding), vol. 2 with two folding plates, vol.3 with a folding plate and a folding plate.

First Edition. Three volumes. 12mo. [194 x 113 x 105 mm]. [2]ff, 400pp; [1]f, 402pp; [1]f, 292 pp. Bound c.1835 in blue boards and purple cloth spines with printed paper labels, plain endleaves, uncut and partly unopened edges. (The cloth a little faded and labels chipped).
York: printed by A. Wood, and sold by W. Tesseyman, J. Tod, H. Sotheran, T. Wilson, N. Frobisher, and R. Spence, Booksellers, 1785.

A fine copy, with the pages entirely untrimmed and some leaves unopened. It is clearly in its first binding, but the binding probably dates from the 1830s. Perhaps a bookseller found a set (or more) of unused sheets and had them bound in the style of the day.

The work is sometimes attributed to William Combe. The "Editor" notes that the only previous successful attempt to publish a History of York was Drake's work of 1736. By 1785 that work was out of print and "no Copies were to be met with, except at the Decease of some particular Gentlemen, and for which an exhorbitant Price must be given". The contents of each volume is summarised on the title-pages.

Stock no. ebc4363