Views in New-York and its Environs from Accurate, Characteristic & Picturesque Drawings, Taken on the Spot, expressly for this work, by Dakin, Architect; with Historical, Topographical and Critical Illustrations, by Theodore S. Fay, assisted by several Distinguished Literary Gentlemen

New York; London: Peabody & Co; O. Rich, 1831. Some foxing. 4to (26.5 x 21 cm). Text paginated 1-50 consecutively. Engraved title with vignette, marked "proof," three full-page engravings of St. Paul's Broadway, Trinity Church, and City Hall, printed by William D. Smith, folding map colored in outline (mounted on linen); and 20 engraved views on ten sheets, all on india paper mounted, plates 3/4 marked "proof" and plates 19/20 and 21/22 unnumbered and presumed proofs. 19th-century English blue half morocco, marbled boards, gilt-decorated and -lettered on spine, with binder's ticket of Kelly, Gower Place. Provenance: Dora H. Hearne(?), contemporary signature on title; John Hearne, armorial bookplate; with Goodspeed's (note at rear dated March 22, 1929). FIRST EDITION. One of the most celebrated series of early view of New York. "The Peabody prints offer fascinating glimpses of New York in the 1830s" and form "a lively document of a city in the making" (Deák). Includes views of Manhattan from Governor's Island, Broadway, Bowling Green, City Hall, Elysian Fields Hoboken, Coffee-House Slip, Pearl Street, Fulton Market, Blackwell's Island, publisher's offices on Broadway, and La Grange Terrace. The series was intended to run to ten parts but never reached completion. Copies are found with varying complements of plates, and in mixed proof and final states, as here. BAL 5686; Deák 399; Howes F64; Sabin 54712 ("There are copies with proofs on India paper", as here); Stokes III:599.