Lives of men of letters and science, who flourished in the time of George III

London: Charles Knight and Co., 1847. FIRST EDITION (Vol. I); later printing of Vol. II. With 14 plates of portraits by J. Brown. Full calf, rubbed and repaired, gilt spine, simple gold tooling around edges; interior crisp and clean, with marbled edges. From the library of Arnold Thackray with his bookplate and the signature of Madge F. Eberhardt in the first volume. First edition of the first volume, and a later edition of the second volume (originally published 1846). This set contains the biographies of some of the most notable scientific minds of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including fourteen wonderful portraits. Included in this work are chapters on Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume, William Robertson, Joseph Black, James Watt, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, Sir Humphry Davy, Robert Simson, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Lavoisier, Edward Gibbon, Sir Joseph Banks, and Jean le Rond d’Alembert.

The author (1778-1868), the first Lord Brougham, who became Lord Chancellor, was one of the founders of the University College London. For over thirty years he contributed largely to the Edinburgh Review, and continued to write in that journal even after he held the great seal. He helped establish the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and is credited with designing the Brougham, a popular closed four-wheel carriage.