This book is entitled "Lalla Rookh, An Oriental Romance", written by Thomas Moore and published in Boston by Estes and Lauriat in 1885. The book is an Edition De Grand Luxe, limited to five hundred copies for America, for subscribers only, and printed on Imperial Japanese Paper, signed by the Art Director, Fred H. Allen, printed at the Cambridge Press by John Wilson, copyrighted 1884 on the subscription page, and in a fine binding by MacDonald & Son. The book has five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering on the spine, pebbled morocco boards with double gilt-fillet borders and gilt devices in the corners, beautiful silk-moire type patterned endpapers with wide gilt dentelles, the first blank endpaper is stamped "Bound By MacDonald & Son" at the top, the half-title, a large engraved frontispiece of Lalla Rookh followed by a tissue guard and the title page, the subscription page which appears to read "XXX" - number 30 of 500 copies - so it's early in the print run, an illustrated page of Contents, a four-page list of Illustrations and the illustrators, a ten-page Introduction with Illustrations, 274 pages of text and an emblem on the following leaf, and all the edges are gilt. Lalla Rookh is an Oriental romance by Irish poet Thomas Moore, first published in 1817. The title is taken from the name of the heroine of the tale, the fictional daughter of the seventeenth-century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, a real person, the sixth Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1658 until his death in 1707. The work consists of four narrative poems with the connecting tale in prose, and the name Lalla Rookh or Lala-Rukh means "tulip- cheeked", an endearment frequently used in Persian poetry. Thomas Moore (1779 - 1852) was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. The melodies set English-language verse to old Irish tunes, which marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognized in England as a press or "squib" writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was considered a Catholic patriot. The book is 4to. and measures 12 5/8 x 9 in. wide, with a tight binding and clean pages and illustrations (we only found two brown spots on pages 12 and 13), light rubbing on the heel and crown and along the edges of the spine, faded fillets on the front cover, faint shadows on the top margins and some of the bottom margins on the pages, but they don't jump out at you, and wear at the tips. Overall an attractive copy of this limited edition for subscribers. #80 #1679 Location 4th Photo Shelf