Quarto. Title in red and black. [2], ii, 199pp, [3], [201]-202pp, [2]. With a half-title, a frontispiece, a further 24 plates, and numerous engraved illustrations in the text. Finely bound by Riviere & Son (stamp-signed to front turn-in) in contemporary red straight-grain morocco, ruled and lettered in gilt, A.E.G., marbled endpapers, gilt dentelles. Original publisher's printed buff wrappers bound in. Slightest of rubbing to extremities. Internally clean and crisp.

The first edition, an exquisite production, sumptuously bound, of historian and sometime Bishop of London Mandell Creighton's (1843-1901) richly illustrated study of the reign of Elizabeth I.