Small 4to. 60 hand-colored aquatint plates. (Offsetting to title-page from frontispiece.) Contemporary half straight-grain red morocco, original printed label affixed to upper cover, uncut (extremities rubbed, lower cover detached, front hinge starting).

William Alexander was the official draughtsman to the British embassy to China from 1792-1794, and it was during this time he began to draw his subjects. William Miller first published his work, and when John Murray took over Miller's shop, he decided to expand Alexander's volumes on China and the Austrian Empire to form this set of five works covering the Russian and Turkish Empires and England. The original price for the set was £15-15s. One of the plates is watermarked with the date "1821," suggesting that this is from a later print run. Colas 78; Lipperheide 832; Tooley 378.