The Georgian Society Records of Eighteenth Century Domestic Architecture and Decoration in Dublin. [BOOKPLATES OF COUNT JOHN McCORMACK RARE COMPLETE SET – WITH GEORGIAN MANSIONS]

With: Georgian Mansions in Ireland. With some account of the evolution of Georgian architecture and decoration. By Thomas U. Sadlier & P.L. Dickinson. List of subscribers. With numerous plates and illustrations. Six volumes. Dublin: Printed for the Society, 1909-1915. Royal quarto. Original cloth titled in black and decorated with a different large dramatic Dublin door knocker on each upper cover and a 1749 grandfather clock on the lower cover of Vol. V. Armorial bookplates of Papal Count John McCormack, the celebrated Irish tenor on Volumes I to IV. Volume V has been recased with new grey cloth backstrip printed black, The New York School of Fine and Applied Art stamped at the head of the front pastedown. Brown marks from old Sellotape along the old cloth of the joints and both sides of the now sound hinges, stamped library number on the verso of the title, moisture staining to the extreme fore-edge of the frontispiece and title otherwise a good copy. A near fine set. Some mild fading. Occasional spotting. A very desirable set.

The Georgian Society was founded on 21, February 1908 by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy to make a record of Irish architecture, doomed, as he considered it was, to “decay and disappearance”. There were only a limited number of each volume printed for subscribers only: three hundred copies of volume one; four hundred of volume two; five hundred and fifty of volumes three and four; six hundred of volume five, and seven hundred of the Mansions which would account for the rarity and great difficulty in acquiring complete sets. On the upper cover of the bindings are illustrations of Georgian Dublin door knockers.

Volume (1) 1909. Limited to 300 copies. Volume (2) 1910. Limited to 400 copies. Volume (3) 1911. Limited to 550 copies. Volume (4) 1912. Limited to 550 copies. Volume (5) 1913. Limited to 600 copies. Georgian Mansions. Limited to 700.