8vo. In two volumes. [2], viii, 280pp; [4], 263pp, [1]. With engraved portrait frontispiece to vol. I and half-title to both volumes. Contemporary gilt-tooled speckled calf, contrasting red and green morocco lettering-pieces. Lightly rubbed and marked, chip to foot of spine, vol. II. Some slight marking to endpapers of vol. I., free endpapers of volume II torn away, otherwise internally clean and crisp.

The first edition, in two volumes, of the biography of Philip Stanhope Dormer, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), British statesman, whig courtier, poet, and man of letters. A respected figure in court, and briefly Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Chesterfield became best known for the Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774), published posthumously by Eugenia Stanhope, the wife of his illegitimate son. The enclosed letters, never intended for publication, became one of the century's most widely studied handbooks on gentlemanly etiquette. Samuel Johnson would criticise the advice within for encouraging young men to weaponise manners for social advancement, describing the lessons as promoting the 'morals of a whore'.

Chesterfield became known from this as simply the 'Man of the World'. The introduction to this biography references Letters to His Son, describing Chesterfield as 'indeed, what he attempted to form his son, and what this work is intended to exemplify, in the Life and Writings of the father, the complete Man of the World.' The text integrates the narrative of his life and times in parliament with his own writings, incorporating his poems, letters, and treatise on education into the biographical sketches.