Folio. [4], 128pp, [20]. With an engraved folding map and six engraved plates. Contemporary speckled calf, recently rebacked and recornered, contrasting black morocco lettering-piece. Boards rubbed and marked. Contemporary inked annotation to recto of FFEP, armorial blind-stamp of Thomas Homer-Saunders beneath, offsetting to title page, small hole to head of leaf Nn2 - touching index running-title, lightly foxed and browned.

A variant edition, printed in the same year as the first, of the first systematic description of the history and topography of Dorset. Long considered the output of Church of England clergyman John Coker (d. 1631/1635), the work is in fact by Thomas Gerard (1592-1634), who married Anne, daughter of Robert Coker of Mappowder and through his own and wife's family was connected to many of the leading gentry families of the county. On his death the manuscript for the work, a 'General Description' written in the 1620s, passed to the Coker family, eventually being published in 1732 with the attribution to John Coker.