Gibson, William Sidney

The history of the monastery founded at Tynemouth in the diocese of Durham to the honour of God, under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and S.Oswin king & martyr.

London, published for the author by William Pickering 1846, 1847 (but a subsequent reissue).

Reference: 09510
Price: £320 [convert currency]

Full Description

Large 4to. 2 vols. (4) + xxvi + (10) + xxxiv + (24) + 251 + (1)pp, coloured litho frontispiece, 6 litho plates ; viii + (10) + pp 5-125 + (1) + pp (iii)-ccxii + (2)pp, 12 litho plates. Publisher’s quarter red morocco, cloth sides. Engraved bookplates of Edward Hunter.

A later nineteenth-century reissue of Gibson’s History of Tynemouth Priory. It reuses the printed sheets of the original issue, with coloured litho versions of two of the previously illuminated leaves bound as frontispieces in each volume, with the etched plates of the ruins of the priory replaced by lithographs and without illuminated initial letters. Those interested in the history and ruins of Tynemouth Priory and the typography of Pickering publications will however find that the volume is otherwise unaltered, even down to the style of the publisher’s binding, and both this issue and the original edition evidence Pickering’s willingness to publish works of serious scholarship in attractive typographical form, often at financial loss to himself.