V.g., owners' signature inside front cover, usual browning of paper but showing few signs of wear. xi + 292 pp., 8 pages of monochrome plates. Paperback reissue of book first published in 1976 by Allen Lane. Eric Korn, quoted on the back cover, wrote in TLS: David Elliston Allen's original and scholarly book ... is dense with picturesque detail, rich in correlation with social, artistic and technical trends ... he has taken the idea of natural history and produced the natural history of an idea.