PYNE, William Henry (1769-1843). The History of the Royal Residences. London: L. Harrison 'for A. Dry, 1819' [?but J.H.M or H.G. Bohn, 1830s]. 3 volumes, 4° (327 x 267mm). Volume titles and 7 section titles, 7 aquatint frontispieces and 93 aquatint plates by T. Sutherland, R. Reeve, W.J. Bennett, D. Havell, and J. Baily after C. Wild, J. Stephanoff, R. Cattermole, W. Westall, and G. Samuel, some tinted in blue, woodcut tailpiece (variable light spotting and browning on text, some light offsetting, principally from plates onto text). 20th-century Cambridge-panelled speckled calf gilt, gilt morocco spine-labels, yellow edges (extremities very light rubbed or scuffed). IProvenance: S. Palmer M.D., October 1860 (inscriptions on endpapers) occasional marginal annotations and corrections in pencil, one dated 1878 -- Their Royal Highnesses Prince and Princess Michael of Kent (bookplates). FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE MOST AMBITIOUS AQUATINT BOOKS TO BE PUBLISHED ON ENGLISH INTERIORS, later uncoloured issue. This celebrated work was the first to illustrate royal palaces and houses in any detail: volume I is a valuable record of the state rooms of Windsor Castle formed for Charles II, and concludes with the more domestic scenes of Frogmore, purchased by Queen Charlotte as a country retreat in 1793; volume II is devoted to Hampton Court, whose state rooms had fallen into disuse for almost 60 years, Buckingham Palace, bought for the Queen for £28,000 shortly after her marriage to George III, and Kensington Palace, constructed for William III, but so neglected by 1814 that the Duke of Kent complained of 'rain pouring through the ceiling at twenty different points' and of being 'literally perishing with cold in my library'; volume III's subjects are St. James's Palace and Carlton House, and, while the former had been badly burned in 1809, the 20 plates devoted to the Prince Regent's residence depict what were regarded as the most spectacular interiors in Regency London. Although the watermarks on this set predate the stated publication date of 1819, this set is a later issue with the plates uncoloured, which Abbey -- who describes the plates as 'sharp and clear ... all undoubtedly early impressions' -- suggests dates from c. 1827 to the 1830s; he further adds that if such remaindered sets of plates and sheets were issued after the mid 1830s, the publisher may have been John Henry Martin Bohn or his son Henry George Bohn. This copy is without the rearrangement slip in vol. III called for by Abbey 396, which may not have been included in the later-issue sets. Abbey Scenery 397; cf. Tooley 389. (3)