A Book of Old Testament Illustrations of the Middle of the XIIIth Century. Sent by Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski to Shab Abbas the Great, King of Persia, Now in the Pierpont Morgan Library at New York. Described by Sydney C. Cockerell. With an Introduction by Montague Rhodes James, and Notes on the Armour by Charles J. Ffoulkes.

Large folio, [xii],148pp., one of a small number (probably not more than 50) printed for members of the Roxburghe Club, 92 full-page facsimile plates by Emery Walker Ltd., including 10 in fine colour with gilt decoration, slight browning to lower margin of half-title and title page, the text and plates are clean, some light damp staining both upper and lower boards, orig. red half morocco, gilt, upper hinge cracked, some discolourations, a little rubbed, uncut, t.e.g. ìIn 1927 James and Cockerell again collaborated in one of the most magnificent of all Roxburghe books, the Old Testament Illustrations, originally executed in the thirteenth century and sent by Cardinal Maciejowski to Shah Abbas in 1608. This had come in 1920 from the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (from whom Robert Curzon had tried to buy it in 1869), to the Pierpont Morgan Library where, with its splendid illustrations, which its romantic provenance has adored with marginal glosses in a fine Persian hand, it is one of the principal treasures. [it is] bound in half red morocco with the spine panels and corners tooled in gold, the only covering, perhaps, worthy of the contents.î ó Barker, The Publications of the Roxburghe Club, p. 60. The MS. is reproduced in its entirety (46 folios).