The Naval Achievements of Great Britain from the Year 1793 to 1817

First edition, early issue, with 55 hand coloured plates and one uncoloured, all save one with tissue-guards, guards well foxed (thus doing their job). Engraved titlepage with un-coloured vignette, undated but 1817. According to Abbey early issues have an uncoloured vignette. Not paginated. Quarto (14 x 11 ins); pp viii, [152]. Bound in handsome contemporary calf of purplish-black, four raised bands to spine, with numerous tooled devices both in gilt and blind, very ornate. Corners lightly rubbed and bumped. Front hinge becoming exposed. Marbled endpapers with publisher's label stating price of THIRTEEN GUINEAS. Page edges speckled blue. 55 fine, hand-coloured aquatint plates by Sutherland and others after Whitcombe, including Battle of Trafalgar bound as frontispiece) plus one un-coloured plate containing two etchings showing battle plans for the Bombardment of Algiers an the Battle of Trafalgar, plates extremely fresh and bright. As with most copies of this book, the portraits of Nelson and Lord St. Vincent, and the List of Subscribers, are not present - "the work is complete without them" (Tooley). A very nice copy of this superb books of paintings depicting famous British naval battles. In the words of Roger Quarm of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, "As a record of naval events spanning a period of over twenty years Jenkins' Naval Achievements has no precedent. At no time prior to 1817 has a publisher attempted such a complete volume of documentary naval prints. It is the quality of the accuracy which makes Jenkins so valuable above all and it is the pictures rather than the text to which the value can be attributed".