Home / Browse / Illustrated / The Costume of the Russian Empire.

[ALEXANDER, William]

The Costume of the Russian Empire.

First Edition (but a later issue), with the uncommon imprint of Howlett and Brimmer on the title and verso of the last page of letterpress. Both Abbey and Colas call for S. Gosnell as the printer and, in fact, Abbey notes that: “the Cat. Russica records what it calls another edition in 1803, and an edition printed by Howlett and Brimmer in 1803, but other references to these have not been found.” A superb record of the dress of the many different peoples of the Russian empire at the turn of the 19th century, the era of Pushkin and Lermontov.

Folio. Contemporary green straight-grained morocco, gilt lettered and decorated spine, blind stamped and gilt decoration to boards. With 73 fine handcoloured stipple-engraved plates by J. Dadley after J. G. Georgi, letterpress in English and French. Bookplate on front pastedown. Boards faded, slight wear to extremities, very light offsetting from plates to text, otherwise a very good internally clean copy.