[STRUTT, Joseph (1749-1802)]. The Chronicle of England. London: Printed by Joseph Cooper/ Thomas Jones, 1777-1779.

First edition [vol. I with first issue preface dated April 1777]. In two volumes. Leather-bound. Quarto (27cm x 22cm). Pp. viii, 365, [3]; vi, [2], 291. English text. Handsomely bound in later full panelled calf gilt. Marbled endpapers. 42 engraved maps and plates. Printed footnotes and sidenotes. Appendices. Condition: VERY GOOD. Collated complete. Bindings tight and secure, the covers beautifully preserved. Some light toning and trivial marginal staining, the plates very well-preserved. Without previous ownership markings.

Notes: A rare and influential history of England chronicling from the arrival of Julius Caesar to the end of the Saxon heptarchy. The English art historian, Sir Roy Strong, called Joseph Strutt, engraver, artist, antiquary, and writer the earliest and "most important single figure in the investigation of the costume of the past", making him "an influential but totally neglected figure in the history of art in Britain" [Strong, 50].

"Strutt, Joseph 1749-1802, author, artist, antiquary, and engraver... In 1771 he became a student in the reading-room of the British Museum, whence he drew the materials for most of his antiquarian works. His first book, 'The Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England,' appeared in 1773. For it he drew and engraved from ancient manuscripts representations of kings, costumes, armour, seals, and other objects of interest, this being the first work of the kind published in England. He spent the greater part of his life in similar labours, his art becoming little more than a handmaid to his antiquarian and literary researches. Between 1774 and 1776 he published the three volumes of his 'Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits, &c., of the People of England,' and in 1777-8 the two volumes of his 'Chronicle of England,' both large quarto works, profusely illustrated, and involving a vast amount of research. ..Although the amount of Strutt's work as an engraver is small, apart from that appearing in his books, it is of exceptional merit and is still highly esteemed. In the study of those branches of archaeology which he followed he was a pioneer, and all later work on the same lines has been built on the foundations he laid." [DNB]. [ESTC T75215; Lowndes 2538; Haigh 1984].