Ducatus Leodiensis: Or, the Topography of the Ancient and Populous Town and Parish of Leedes, and Partes Adjacent, in the West-Riding of the County of York. The Second Edition, with Notes and Additions, by Thomas Dunham Whitaker

Description

Recently rebound in quarter dark brown morocco, dark brown cloth to boards. Gilt lettering to spine. Folio (44 x 28.5cm). Hinges sound. Replacement endpapers. Loss to original rear blank endpage (c. 4.5 x 5cm), repaired and restored with recent paper. Half-title. Moderate scattered foxing. 12 full-page plate and 16 genealogies (some two to a page), as called for in list at rear. Several in-text illus. Vignette to title page (original, pasted on). Occasional erratic pagination (p. 268 misnumbered 261; p. 162 misnumbered 151). Separate dated title page for ‘Musaeum Thoresbyanum: Or, A Catalogue of the Antiquities, and of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Preserved in the Repository of Ralph Thoresby, Gent. F.R.S. at Leeds in Yorkshire, A.D. MDCCXII’. Within the Musaeum Thoresbyanum, the ‘Catalogue and Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities’ has separate pagination, as does index to rear. Second edition of this magisterial work of local history by the antiquarian and topographer Ralph Thoresby (1658-1725), first published in 1715 and ‘the first work of importance by a Yorkshire antiquary’ (ODNB). Thoresby’s collection of antiquities and curiosities, the Musaeum Thoresbyanum, ‘was remarkable not only for the variety of material which it contained but also as a highly developed manifestation of what was largely a metropolitan pastime in a provincial setting’; Thoresby’s fellow antiquarian Richard Gough (director of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 1771 to 1791) ‘considered him to have inherited Tradescant’s mantle as the foremost private collector in Britain’ (ODNB). The collection was dispersed by auction after Thoresby’s death and much material lost, leaving this catalogue as the sole record. This second edition of Ducatus Leodiensis was revised by Lancashire clergyman and antiquarian Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1759-1821), author of local histories including the exhaustive History of Whalley, 1801, and the 1816 Loidis and Elmete, a history of the area around Leeds, published the same year as his revised edition of Thoresby’s work and often found bound together with it. Our copy does not include Whitaker’s Loidis, but is complete as it stands as an edition of the Ducatus Leodiensis. Robust packaging. Tracking can be added to overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs.