WISE (Thomas J.). The Ashley Library. A Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts and Autograph Letters Collected by Thomas J. Wise. With a New Introduction by Simon Nowell Smith.1971

Dawsons. 11 Vols., large 8vo, frontispiece or portrait in each volume, plates and facsimiles throughout, with the British Museum shelf number against each item in their possession, (all but about 240 items), orig. cloth, a couple of spines lightly spotted. "The catalogue of the Ashley Library, which was acquired by the British Museum, is a useful reference work, especially in English nineteenth-century first editions, which are represented in unrivalled completeness. The late seventeenth and eighteenth-century collections are also very full".—Breslauer and Folter, 151. "... the most remarkable collection of rare books and manuscripts in modern English literature put together by a single collector in Great Britain in the hundred years before 1850 and 1950".—Simon Nowell Smith (introduction).