The finest edition of one of the greatest of all London books, with Stow's original 1598 survey augmented, expanded, and updated by later editors, and here furnished with a veritable store-house of illustrative maps and plates.

The text, originally issued in weekly parts between 1754 and 1757, comprises a general description and history, ward by ward topography, accounts of the suburbs and liberties, a long and detailed summation of the government and customs of the City and its institutions, laws and trades, as well as substantial material on Westminster and the outlying parishes. The maps include folding maps of the city and the environs by Richard William Seale (1703-1762), and maps of the individual wards and outlying parishes (including areas not represented in the earlier illustrated edition of 1720). In addition to the exquisite plates by Johannes Kip originally prepared for the 1720 edition, the plates are now more than doubled in number and include many striking images of the more recent London buildings and squares by Sutton Nicholls, Samuel Wale, Thomas Bowles, John Maurer, and others.

Sixth edition; 2 vols, folio (41.5 x 27 cm); 132 engraved maps & plates after Kip, Nicholls, Bowles, and others (70 double-page), many folding and or double-page, light occasional spotting and offsetting not affecting attractiveness of plates, one small marginal tear to pl.11 repaired, gilt leather bookplates to pastedowns; 19th-century full red morocco, gilt panels to boards, spine lettered in gilt in six elaborately gilt compartments, all edges gilt, small splits to head of spine of vol. 2, a little rubbed, a very good copy; [viii], xx, 758; 838, [14] pp.

Adams 37.