£2,500
Folio, pp. [88] + frontispiece and 41 plates, all hand-coloured and aquatint. Contemporary half black roan, marbled boards. Text leaves somewhat toned with some foxing and offsetting, but plates clean. Boards rubbed, smartly rebacked, corners repaired.
William Daniell (1769-1837) produced his monumental Voyage round Great Britain, called by Tooley 'the most important colour plate book on British topography', in eight volumes between 1814 and 1825; the over three hundred plates in that work are highly praised for their delicacy and beauty in their representation of the British coast. This book contains the plates from the fourth volume of that series, showing Daniell's images of some of the Scottish highlands and islands, separately published with its own title-page.
Its existence is slightly mysterious: apparently scarcer than the larger work, it escapes the notice of Abbey and Tooley. The title-page is undated but the plates have dates ranging from January 1819 to June 1820, and as a result records of it usually assign it to circa 1820. But Daniell published his work himself in association with Longman's, an imprint shared by the full 'Voyage' and also at least one other offshoot volume, a group of nine views of Staffa published in 1818. The involvement of William Lewis, on the title-page here, is not found elsewhere in Daniell's project.
Sutton, in his book on the Daniells, asserts that it was 'published after William Daniell's death' in 1837, without further detail. Apart from a Sotheby's sale record from 1988 which assigns a date of 1831, this is the only reference we have found to the book possibly being produced later than 1820. The Sotheby's record does highlight that the book is dedicated to Elizabeth Leveson Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, a fact which does suggest a date after she attained that title in 1832, but before her death (and the publsiher's change to 'W. Lewis & Son') in 1839.
