[4], 216 pp. With 108 copper-engraved plates by Jacobus Houbraken and George Vertue. (Folio) 53x36.5 cm (20¾x14½"), period full mottled calf, raised bands with gilt ruling, spine lettered in gilt. 

Rare large paper issue, far surpassing the earlier editions, the first of which appeared in two volumes, 1743-51. Present are finely engraved portraits of British luminaries from the 14th to 18th centuries. Included are literary icons such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Dryden and Alexander Pope; royal personages including Henry VIII and various of his queens (but oddly not his daughter, Queen Elizabeth); men of science and philosophy, among them Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, William Harvey and Robert Boyle; adventurers Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh; and politicians and nobility too numerous to count. Each portrait is accompanied by a biographical sketch of about 1½ pages on following leaf.