A handsome and complete set of this monumental collection of castles, abbeys, country houses, and city prospects, regarded as a crucial cultural touchstone of the 18th century.

Buck's Antiquities preserves many castles and abbeys, which are now totally destroyed, and the ways of life of the towns and cities captured in their urban panoramas before the industrial revolution. This was the intention: unlike other works of the time that merely sought to romanticise English history, the Bucks sought to 'rescue the mangled remains... [of] these aged & venerable edifices from the inexorable jaws of time'. By all accounts they succeeded, as their engravings now stand as an invaluable source of local history and topography.

The entire project took Samuel Buck (1696-1779) and his brother Nathaniel Buck (d.1759/1774) thirty-four years, with eighteen years of travelling between 1724 and 1742 and the engravings themselves appearing in parts from 1726 through to 1753. The commercial success of the enterprise initially made the Buck brothers wealthy, as is shown by the ostentatious mezzotint twin portrait engraved by Richard Houston after the painting by Joseph Highmore. Despite initial success, financial difficulties in later life forced the brothers to sell the plates to Robert Sayer in 1774, who then reissued the complete work in three volumes under the title Buck's Antiquities as here.

Each plate has a, sometimes extensive, descriptive caption and the crest and title of the owner of the castle, abbey, or house in question. New to the 1774 issue are the additional descriptions of the plates in the introductions; for the prospects they expand to broad architectural descriptions of the town and cities they depict.

First edition; three volumes, folios (vols one and two 46 x 30 cm, vol three 46 x 46.5 cm); mezzotint portrait frontispiece, additional engraved title-page, double-page map coloured in outline, 428 numbered engraved plates with descriptive captions, of which 6 folding, 83 double-page city prospects, engraved vignette head- and tailpieces, armorial bookplates to pastedowns of vols 2 and 3, light spotting to 10 prospects and 6 folding plates, small repaired tear to inner margin of frontispiece and engraved title, outer margins of plate 297 trimmed, otherwise clean internally; contemporary full tree calf expertly restored preserving original spines, gilt rolled border to boards, flat gilt spines in seven compartments with contrasting gilt morocco lettering pieces, gilt to top edges tarnished, a near-fine set; viii, (9)-24, [2]; 17, [1]; 22pp.

Upcott, 1, xxxiii; Ralph Hyde, Gilded Scenes and Shining Prospects, Panoramic Views of British Towns 1575-1900; Ralph Hyde, A Prospect of Britain, The Town Panoramas of Samuel and Nathaniel Buck.