[English Lake Scenery] [with] The Tourist's New Guide, containing a Description of the Lakes, Mountains, and Scenery, in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire

EXTREMELY RARE. Oblong quarto (250 x 335 mm.), contemporary half red morocco, marbled paper boards, rebacked in matching morocco, red morocco gilt title label affixed to upper board, uncut. Without title as issued, with 60 tinted aquatints printed in colours. [With] two octavo volumes (230 x 140 mm. each), rebacked green morocco, gilt ruled with titles, boards with adverts front and back, boards lightly rubbed, uncut. With half-titles, titles, pp. xi, (1), viii, 461, (4); (2), ix, (1), 507, (1), lv, (2), with errata leaves to each volume, containing 1 folding map of the Lake District and 12 tinted aquatints, very good condition. This work was issued without a title and is a series of sixty tinted aquatint engravings each numbered to 60. Each bears the imprint date of Ambleside and is dated June 1, 1815. They were supported in 1819 by a two volume sometime later by ublished in Ambleside appears to have been issued without text as a companion to the artist's The 'Tourist's New Guide', published in Kendal, 1819. The covers to the text bear adverts to the 'Exhibition and Sale Rooms' in Ambleside and Keswick in the Lake District. The accompanying prints are top of the list of those on offer cited as 'Sixty coloured Aquatista Views of the Lakes, printed on super royal quarto drawing paper ? Price Five Guineas ? Single Prints Two Shillings and Sixpence each. ? These are the prints described in the Guide.' It goes on to state that the plates 'attempt to display in miniature the grandeur and vastness of the most stupendous English scenery. The oblong quarto work is extremely rare with only one auction record since Sotheby's 15 April 1988 lot 140 where it fetched £2,200. Only one example at King's College, University of Cambridge, is recorded on Library Hub out of 205 libraries. The text appears in two apparent formats, with 12 aquatint plates as here, or a combination of 31 etchings and aquatints as listed in Abbey. Examples of the 12 plates alone have been noted once bound with the 60 plates.William Green (1761-1823) was a noted draughtsman, etcher, and aquatint engraver specialising in landscapes. Born in Manchester, he learnt his craft in London before moving to Ambleside in the Lake District to live. At the end of the Preface Green states 'It is necessary to apologize for the explanation to sixty aquatints, published in 1815. A description of these prints was always meditated, and its incorporation with a short guide, was deemed a proper vehicle for information, though unforeseen circumstances have protracted the time of publication to uncalculated lengths, the description so began could not with propriety be abandoned.'Provenance: plate volume: manuscript inscription of 'Cordelia Bearners 1822' inside upper board, Kerr Books, Cartmel, Cumberland; private English collection. Text, bookplate of Charles Green pasted inside upper covers; pencil inscription of G. H. Martin on front free endpapers; private English collection. Refer Abbey (1952) 190 with no mention of the accompanying oblong quarto work or the variant offered here with just 12 aquatint plates; not in Anderson (1881); Bicknell 'Picturesque Scenery of the Lake District 1752-1855' 68 & 69b; Mackenzie (1998); Tooley (1987) 238. …