The Microcosm of London; or, London in Miniature.

“The ‘Microcosm of London’ is one of the great colour-plate books, and a carefully selected copy should form the corner stone of any collection of books on this subject. The plates by Rowlandson and Pugin present an unrivaled picture of London in early 19th century, of historic value, as many of the buildings no longer exist” (Tooley). Early impressions are particularly prized: “original impressions of these splendid plates have a luminous quality entirely absent from later printings” (Abbey). "The book was issued in twenty-six monthly parts, each part containing four plates, and at 7s. a part, a price that was advanced early on to 10. 6d. for non-subscribers. A thousand sets are said to have been issued, a statement that may be correct for the original part publication, but must be considerably short of the final number, when bound sets distributed later are taken into account. At the end of the third volume, a list of thirteen errata for the three volumes is given. If these have been corrected then the set will be found to be a late issue: if all the errata are uncorrected (this is rare), then the book has been bound from parts; the same claim of part binding can be made for sets that have errata uncorrected except for that reading 'coustom' for 'custom' on page 218 of volume 1. This is the case with the present copy -- all errata uncorrected except one." (Abbey).