8vo. x, civ, 427pp, [1]. With an etched frontispiece, a tinted wood-engraved plate, and two vignettes. Extra-illustrated with 68 engravings/chromolithographs (predominantly portraits of prominent authors, but also illustrations of fine bindings), two leaves extracted from later publications, and two tipped-in A.L.S. in the hand of Katharine Burton (the author's second wife). Contemporary red morocco, lettered in gilt to spine. Extremities rubbed. Marbled endpapers, later book-label of William Abercrombie to FEP, occasional offsetting.

A generously margined, grangerized copy of the first posthumously published edition, with the addition of a memoir by his second wife Katharine Burton (1824-1898), daughter of antiquary Cosmo Nelson Innes (1798-1874), of John Hill Burton's (1809-1881) collected articles on the various personal characteristics of the book collector and related organisations and collecting clubs, which had first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine prior to being first issued in book form in 1862.