Saunders' Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Living Political Reformers. The Portraits by George Hayter and other Eminent Artists, and the Memoirs by a Distinguished Literary Character. [With] a Sketch of the Progress of Parliamentary Reform by William Howitt. REMARKABLY BRIGHT, CRISP COPY IN PERIOD BINDING

Published by the New Proprietor, J. Dowding,, 1840. Roy. 8vo., First Edition, with fine engraved portrait frontispiece and 27 fine engraved portrait plates (all original tissue guards present), some very light and generally inoffensive foxing, a few guards offset as intended; contemporary half calf, marbled boards, gilt back, sprinkled edges, brown endpapers, covers lightly age-marked and rubbed at extremities else a remarkably bright, clean copy with excellent impressions of the plates. Includes (in alphabetical order, and each with a portrait): Bowring, Buller, Buxton, Byng, Codrington, Durham, Ebrington, Grey, Grote, Holland, Hume, James, Lansdowne, Leader, Melbourne, Morpeth, Mulgrave, Palmerston, Roebuck, Russell, Spencer, Talfourd, Thompson, Thomson. Wakley, Warburton and Wyse. An important text in the literature of parliamentary reform in Britain. Though the work is often noted for the excellent likenesses of its plates (the majority engraved by Mote and Hull from work by Hayter and others), it would be a mistake to under-value Saunders' assessments, which comprise a key series of contemporary appraisals of biography, character and achievement not easily found elsewhere. Text by novelist John Saunders (1810-1895); the majority of portraits by William Hayter (1792-1879); Sketch of Parliamentary Reform by William Howitt (1792-1871). VERY SCARCE, ESPECIALLY IN THIS CONDITION.