The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire.

FIRST EDITION

London, 1712. folio (470 x 275mm.), with engraved portrait of the author, 8 plates of coats-of-arms, double-page county map, and 64 double-page plates, old half morocco gilt.

A handsome copy of this famous work. The finest early illustrated work about the seats and estates of this county.

Atkyns was a Member of Parliament for the county of Gloucestershire. He was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford (admitted 1663), and Lincoln’s Inn (admitted 1661). He was called to the Bar in 1668 but did not practise and was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in November 1664.

The sixty-four plates are richly etched copper-plate engravings after drawings by Johannes Kip in his earliest manner, except Badminton which was drawn by Knyff. They are signed by Kip but not dated in this, the first edition.

The work was possibly in type during Atkyns’ life-time,but did not appear until the year after his death. It is also considered the finest topographical history of Gloucestershire. Many of the houses depicted have been altered or demolished.

Kip used these views in his Britannia Illustrata. There was a second edition published in 1768 but the impressions are often faint compared to the first edition.

‘The value of the first edition increased after the greater part of the engraved plates were destroyed in a fire which occurred at Boyer’s printing office in Whitefriars, London on Jan. 29th , 1712-13’. (Upcott)

Upcott I, p.246; cf. BAL RIBA 147