London: Day & Son for FG Moon, 1846-49. Subscribers’ edition.

Lithograph by Louis Haghe after Roberts, 32 x 47.5 cm, with original hand colour, trimmed to the edge of the image and mounted on card as issued. An example from the scarce deluxe edition of the work, generally referred to as the ‘subscribers’ edition’; published concurrently with the standard first edition – at roughly twice the price – it wasn’t strictly limited to subscribers, but there are far fewer examples in circulation. From the first edition of ‘Egypt and Nubia’, which in Abbey’s words, together with Roberts’ ‘The Holy Land’ (1842-45, Abbey 385) forms “one of the most important and elaborate ventures in nineteenth-century publishing, and … the apotheosis of the tinted lithograph”. The interior of the Temple of Khnum at Esna. Abbey, Travel, 272.