‎SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON.‎
‎Vetusta monumenta quae ad Rerum Britanicarum memoriam conservandam Societas Antiquariorum Londini sumptu suo edenda curavit. 5 vols. (Vol. 1-5, out of 7). - [MONUMENTAL ILLUSTRATED WORK]‎

‎London, 1747 - 1835. Elephant folio (550 x 390 mm). 5 volumes, uniformly bound in nice recent green half calf bindings with five raised bands and gilt lettering and ornamentation to spines, top edges gilt. Some plates with marginal dampstains and brownspotting - an overall nice set. 290 engraved plates (complete).‎

Reference : 60399

‎First edition of this monumental work, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL), containing plates depicting ancient monuments, buildings, sites, and artefacts, primarily British. The society defined its agenda in terms of preservation, visual documentation, and collecting but occasionally also broke new ground vol. 2 containing one of the very earliest printed depictions of the Rosetta Stone including classical scholar Richard Porson’s work on the missing lower right corner of the Greek text. Vetusta Monumenta published in seven volumes between 1747 and 1906 – with the first five volumes offered here -, was the first of four major publication series launched by SAL in the eighteenth century. The first four plates were published individually in 1718 at the Mitre Tavern. By 1747, seventy engravings had been published, enough to form a substantial volume. The same year, John Ward (1679-1758) became director of the SAL. Ward had begun writing long explanatory captions for some of the plates beginning in 1743, and these soon evolved into printed companion essays in either Latin or English, which appeared occasionally from 1744. The second volume, with 55 more plates, appeared in 1789. It was greatly expanded by these letterpress explanations of the plates, which had begun to appear not just occasionally but with every plate or plate set (and consistently in English) from 1763. The fourth volume was published in 1815 with 52 plates and the fifth was published in 1835 with 69 plates.‎