HANDSOME SET OF LECKY’S EUROPEAN HISTORIES

LECKY, William Edward Hartpole. The History of England in the Eighteenth Century. Eight volumes. WITH: History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. Two volumes. WITH: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. London: Longmans, Green, 1891, 1868, 1865. Twelve volumes in all. Uniformly bound in contemporary three-quarter dark green morocco, raised bands, ornately gilt-decorated spines, top edges gilt. $2500.

Handsome 12-volume set, bound by Sotheran and Co., of three of Lecky’s popular and insightful histories of Europe. Includes the first edition of his noted History of European Morals.

“I have not attempted,” Lecky writes in the preface to his History of England, “to write a history of the period I have chosen year by year, or to give a detailed account of military events or of the minor personal and party incidents which form so large a part of political annals. It has been my object to disengage from the great mass of facts those which relate to the permanent forces of the nation, or which indicate some of the more enduring features of national life…” Armorial bookplates.

Fine condition.