li, 912 pp. (8vo), 21x13 cm (8¼x5½"), early full calf, re-backed with modern sympathetic cloth, spine lettered in gilt, new endpapers. First Edition.
"Contains much curious and important bibliographical information not elsewhere to be found and will at all times be consulted, as a work of reference, by the Bibliographer, Biographer, and Historian" (Lowndes) This first edition of 2,000 copies sold out in three months. Although of little bibliographical value now, it still has much anecdotal use. This first edition contains an account of Upcott's controversial acquisition of seventeenth-century autograph material from the late John Evelyn's widow, which, as Windle and Pippin records, 'Upcott requested to be omitted in the second edition.'
