Londinopolis; An Historicall Discourse or Perlustration Of the City of London, The Imperial Chamber, and chief Emporium of Great Britain: whereunto Is added another of the City of Westminster, With The Courts of Justice, Antiquities, and new Buildings thereunto belonging. [With] Map of London by Rutger Hermannides

London : J Streater, for Henry Twiford, George Sawbridge, Thomas Dring, and John Place, 1657 A very good copy of Londinopolis in full leather binding. James Howell, (c1594-1666) navigated his way with some difficulty through the changing allegiances of the English Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration, spending 8 years in prison between 1643 and 1650. He attempted various court positions, becoming Royal Historiographer to Charles II in 1660, but made most of his living from writing. Londinopolis describes the main landmarks and areas of London with outlines of their history. Lowell is frank that he has 'fetched' most of his materials from others and it is considered that much of the content comes from Stow. This copy of Londinopolis is in a later 1800's full leather binding by H Woodburn.This has a delicate blind tooled border of leaves to the boards; raised bands, blind tooled designs and title label to spine. It is showing some wear to the front hinge and edges and has a small scuff but is otherwise in very good clean condition. There is an ink signature 'Stouthall' to the front pastedown endpaper. Contents: initial blank; frontispiece by Abraham Bosso; title page in red and black inks; blank; poem in latin and english; dedication to the 'Renowned City of London' 2pp; Some Advertisements to the Reader 2pp; The Chiefest Materials 2pp; doublepage panoramic view of London by Holler; text pp 1-407 with decorative initial capitals; blank; index 6+pp; Catalogue of Mr Howell's works 1p; more works 1p; blank with pasted note by Stouthall. It is likely that this is Wing variant H3091. There are numerous pagination errors, but no loss of text eg p 85 to 84, to 95; 123 to 128; 128 to 311The title page has part of a signature at the top suggesting that the page edges were trimmed down when it was rebound. There is some marking to the bottom of the Advertisements, and to the top of p 399, but the contents are generally very clean. The paper is lightly toned.