8vo. [2], 304pp, [1]. Occasional later inked and pencilled marginal manuscript annotations, often shaved. Nineteenth-century two-tone cloth boards, ruled and lettered in gilt. Rubbed and marked.

A late eighteenth-century edition of politician and historian Horace Walpole's (1717-1797) study of notable English or English-resident engravers, first published at Strawberry-Hill in 1765. The catalogue served as a continuation of Walpole's 'Anecdotes of painting' series, of which it was intended to be the fifth volume; the notebooks of George Vertue (1684-1756), English engraver, continued to supply much of his primary material.