A COLLECTION OF REMARKABLE AND INTERESTING CRIMINAL TRIALS, Actions at Law, &c. To which is prefixed, an Essay on Reprieve and Pardon, and Biographical Sketches of John Lord Eldon, and Mr. Mingay.

First edition. Two volumes. Publisher's original quarter vellum over paper-covered boards with titles in black to the spines. Page edges untrimmed. Illustrated with an engraved portrait frontispiece to each volume and an additional engraved portrait to volume one. A very good set indeed, the bindings square and firm with a little loss to the vellum spine covering at the foot of the second volume and rubbing and wear to the extremities. The contents lacking the front free endpaper of volume one and with a contemporary previous owner's name in ink to the head of each title page, a 1.5 cm closed tear to the blank top margin of the frontispiece of volume two, and some light scattered foxing are otherwise in very good order throughout. An attractive set.

An extensive collection of lively, detailed accounts of around 150 eighteenth-century criminal trials. Concerning the prosecution of a wide-range of men and women from all walks of life, with everyone from vagrants to peers of the realm represented, the crimes of those accused are similarly diverse, and include: smuggling, murder, libel, embezzlement, burglary, forgery, treason, false promise of marriage, highway robbery, perjury, slander, piracy, shoplifting, "corruption of morals", stock-jobbing, illegal duelling, "seduction", and "female scandal". The work also includes a bibliographical sketches of the prominent contemporary barristers John Scott, 1st Earl Eldon and James Mingay, King's Counsel. A scarce work, particularly so in the original boards. Only three institutional copies are recorded on Copac (BL, Bodleian, and the London Library).