Prehistoric Man: Researches into the Origins of Civilisation in the Old and the New World. 2vols.

Hardcover. Original brown cloth ruled in gilt and decorated in black, with gilt cover vignette. 2 vols. xviii, 488; vi, 499 + ads. Illustrated with engraved textual illustrations; coloiur frontispiece each volume. Small ink name on v.1 title-page; some fraying to spine tips; front hinges started; v.1 binding split (needs resewing), and first signature loose in v.2; foxing to prelims, affecting frontispiece margins, but images only slightly; nevertheless, an exceptionally bright and otherwise clean set. Daniel Wilson (later “Sir”) was a professor of history and English literature at University College, University of Toronto, after whom one of the college’s residences is named. McGill University anthropologist, Bruce G. Trigger, has called Wilson’s Prehistoric Man “one of the most important works of anthropological synthesis produced in the nineteenth century” (Robert Stacey, Sir Daniel Wilson: Ambidextrous Polymath, exhibition catalogue, University of Toronto Art Centre, 2001, p. 58).