The State of the Prisons (Everyman's Library, No. 835)

xvii, [i], 308pp. In grey cloth-covered boards with gilt titles on spine, upper text block edge sprayed (cloth worn at edges, starting to fray at spine tips, call mark on spine with a patch of discolouration, likely where a small label has been). Bookplate on front paste down, indicating that the volume was one in the collection of Harlech College (no other library signs internally), else internally neat, clean, bright and tight. John Howard's watershed account of the state of prisons in England, written with a pity and indignation triggered by his experiences as Sheriff of Bedford, a position to which he was appointed in 1773. Howard's proposals for reform were so sweeping and so sane that they are likely to remain as the standard by which prison systems are judged for as long as prisons exist. 12mo.