Beschreibung:

From the Library of Clayre and Jay Michael Haft
Auguste Racinet
Le Costume Historique. Cinq cents planches, trois cents en couleurs, or et argent, deux cents en camaieu. Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot- 1888
FIRST EDITION, folio (406 x 284mm.), half-titles in each volume, 475 (only, of 500) plates, most chromolithographs heightened with gold and silver, and tinted lithographs, contemporary red half morocco over marbled boards, top edges gilt, green endpapers, prelims of each volume foxed, lighter scattered spotting elsewhere, upper cover and half of vol.2 detached, spine of vol.6 splitting at first compartment, extremities rubbed
The most famous nineteenth-century costume book, and the first fashion book to use colour lithography.
LITERATURE:Colas 2471 ("le plus important recueil general concernant le costume"); Lipperheide Ad52; Vicaire VI, 945-6; Vinet 2141
PROVENANCE:William Knox D'Arcy (1849-1914), of Stanmore Hall: armorial bookplate (with motto "Un Dieu Un Roy")