Quarto. 32pp. With two finely engraved plates; a portrait frontispiece of the subject, and a fine dramatic view of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, originally drawn by Miss Stevenson. Original publisher's gilt-tooled and titled buckram. Spine a trifle faded, light shelf-wear and few indents to lower board, else a fine copy. Presentation copy, inscribed 'Tolbooth Chuch Library, From Mesr. Stevenson' to head of title, and in a later hand, with the signature of D. Alan Stevenson; recently dispersed from the remains of the Stevenson family library. Some neat pencilled annotations to text, in the hand of D. Alan Stevenson.

A presentation copy of the first illustrated edition of Alan Stevenson's biographical sketch of his father and sometime business partner, Robert Stevenson (1772-1850), Scottish civil engineer and lighthouse-designer.

First read at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in February 1851, it forms a definitive familial portrait of the founder of a generationally successful family firm of civil engineers, it is focused largely upon his career achievements but also notes the man's devout character, filled with 'sagacity, fortitude, and perseverance'.

This illustrated edition is adorned not only by a finely engraved frontispiece illustration of a bust of Robert Stevenson, engraved by Horsborough after John Syme, but also by a fine impression of the engraving taken from the famously dramatic Night Scene sketch of Bell Rock Lighthouse, by Jane Stevenson (1801-1864), who also acted as his amanuensis during his composition of An Account of the Bell Rock Light-House (London, 1824).

Given the inscription in this copy, and its condition, one assumes it was at some point intended to be given to the Tolbooth Kirk Library, Edinburgh, compliments of the family firm: 'Mesr. Stevenson'.