This present work is a register of all crests known to have been in use in Great Britain and Ireland. Long established as the definitive work in its field, it has passed through a number of editions since it first appeared in 1859. The edition offered here is a reprint of the fourth edition of 1905, the best and most complete edition ever published, used for years as a work of reference by genealogists, artists, engravers, and jewellers.
The main part of this encyclopedic work is an alphabetical list of about 50,000 names associated with various crests, with a full description of each crest and a reference to the plate in which it is illustrated. Following this is a section containing a list of 5,000 mottoes and the names of the families using them.
The illustrated portion of the book–its chief feature–consists of 314 full-page, black-and-white plates with beautiful engravings of about 5,000 crests. Beautifully executed, these illustrations form a timeless archive of family memorabilia. There is also a key to the plates, which cross-indexes the names of the families assigned to each crest, and a dictionary of terms which serves as a glossary.
James Fairbairn
1905, (2020), paper, 1,094 pp.