London: Willioughby & Co. No date, later edition. c.1840s or 50s? Octavo, pp xxiv, 3-275, 1 blank, 8 ads, Original brown cloth decorated in blind to covers, pictorial spine stamped in gilt ("Illustrated Standard Edition...200 Engravings".) Cream endpapers, all edges gilt. Frontispiece with tissue guard and seven other full page illustrations inserted, numerous illustrations in text. Spine sunned to tan; sunning and dampspotting to margins of covers; spine has top half inch chipped away, small pieces missing with loss of parts of "Illustrated Standard", bottom 1/8 inch chipped away; inner hinges cracked; occasional soil spots in text; mainly VG otherwise, sound in the binding. With armorial book plate to front pastedown, and 1854 ink name to front free endpaper, of Thomas Curtis Clarke, eminent American civil engineer and bridge builder. Clarke was a New Englander who moved to Port Hope, Ontario in 1853 to work for the local railway. He married and raised a family there, and was a partner in a Port Hope firm that built the East and West Blocks of Canada's Parliament Buildings in the 1860s. He then moved back to the USA where he pioneered the modern iron viaduct and built major railway bridges that made him famous. Clarke is buried in Port Hope.