ACKERMANN, Rudolph.

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The History of the Abbey Church of St. Peter's Westminster, its Antiquities and Monuments. First edition of this splendidly illustrated survey of Westminster Abbey, visually perhaps the finest publication on the building, issued by Rudolph Ackermann, the greatest publisher of colour books and prints of the age.The designs were produced by several leading artists, the text written by William Combe (renowned as author of Doctor Syntax), and the book subscribed to by most of the royal family and aristocracy. "It is a book which should be highly rated both as an exhaustive pictorial record of the Abbey and for its individual architectural plates, beautifully composed and aquatinted with the addition of discreet colour just sufficient to suggest the cloistered intimacy of sunlight filtered by lofty windows onto fretted stone, wood and metal" (Adams, p. 250).

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