The Picturesque Beauties of the Counties of Surrey & Sussex

 N Whittock; Thomas Allen; Henry Gastineau

Published by Geo. Virtue, 1832

Bound in 1/2 leather over marbled boards. ii, 70 pages, engr. t.-pl., [54] engr. plates ; 26 cm. The majority of the plates are from drawings by Nathaniel Whittock. The title is taken from the title-plate. The plates were originally published in 1829 and 1830, and the present edition probably first appeared in 1832.  This is the second edition of Isaac Taylor Hinton's republication in quarto of the plates from Thomas Allen's two-volume octavo History of the counties of Surrey and Sussex (1829-1830). Hinton's republication had first appeared in 1830 with the title-plate to Allen's first volume altered to read Picturesque beauties of England and Wales, in a series of views, from original drawings by N. Whittock and H. Gastineau. Although the original imprint, 'London, I.T. Hinton, 4 Warwick Square & Holdsworth & Ball, 18 St. Pauls Church Yard, 1829', was left unaltered, the work was issued in printed paper wrappers bearing Hinton's imprint alone dated 1830, and appeared 'in twenty-four numbers, or in eight parts', with 'topographical, historical, and biographical sketches' by 'Thomas Allen Esq. author of Surrey and Sussex' (see Adams p.387). The intention was clearly to tap a market quite different from that which Allen's History had managed to reach, and to extend the geographical scope of the views. However, in the event Hinton published no new plates, and the 64-page text which follows the usual anecdotal formula, being free to flit from view to view in a suitably haphazard and 'picturesque' manner, is little more than a summary of facts from Allen's History. By the end of 1830 ownership of some, if not all, of the plates had passed to Edward Lacey, who added his own imprint to the coppers (his name also appears in the imprint line of the title-plate to Allen's second volume). Shortly after this, however, the entire work changed hands again, for by May 1832 George Virtue was republishing the original History in 33 numbers at two shillings each (or as four volumes bound). Virtue was no doubt as aware as Hinton had been of the need to satisfy a separate demand for 'views' as opposed to 'history', so it seems likely that the present work, being his new edition of the Picturesque beauties, dates from around the same period as his republication of the History. However, it should be noted that the plate of 'Stamford Street' has been recorded with the imprint 'Published by Geo. Virtue, 26, Ivy Lane. 1836.' (see Adams p.388; the BAL copy has this plate without imprint, but the possibility remains that this represents a later state with the tell-tale imprint burnished out). The present edition of Picturesque beauties omits only two of the plates in Allen's History (see Holloway 2-3), namely the title-plate to volume I and the view of Croydon Church (engraved by Thomas Owen). Hinton had previously adapted the 'St. Saviour's' title-plate from the History, but Virtue uses instead the 'Virginia Water' title-plate from volume II. This swap probably explains why the reprinted list of views on the first leaf refers in error to the 'St. Saviour's' vignette instead of the 'King's Marine Pavilion' at Virginia Water.