Two printed sheets comprising title leaf and plate list plus 110 engravings on 87 sheets. (Atlas folio) 25¾x19¼, period diced full calf, gilt borders, early rebacking with spine heavily gilt. First collected edition.

First edition of Boydell's collection of 110 engravings by Hogarth, printed from the original plates, the first posthumous complete edition. Hogarth's engraved plates were left to his wife following his death in 1764, the Boydell's purchased the plates from the widow's cousin, Mary Lewis and offered the prints in the present complete edition as well as individually (the plate list also serves as a price list for the individual prints). The engravings are outstandingly strong impressions on English thick wove paper with broad margins, 6 of the images are mounted to the wove sheets (apparently as issued). "[Hogarth] retains his unique position among English artists. It is as a pictorial chronicler of life and manners, as a satirist and humourist on canvas, that he makes his main demand upon posterity. His skill in seizing upon the ridiculous and the grotesque in life was only equalled by his power of rendering the tragic and the terrible." (DNB) Rarely encountered complete.