A professional author of art and literary criticism as well as travel writing, Anna Jameson (1794–1860) journeyed widely in Europe and North America, and moved in the literary circles which included the Brownings and Harriet Martineau. Many of her other works are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. In 1844, she published this book on the great private art collections of London. She begins with an essay on the formation of the collections, from the seventeenth-century earl of Arundel onwards, and then describes in turn the Queen's Gallery, the Bridgewater, Sutherland, Grosvenor and Lansdowne galleries, and the collections of Sir Robert Peel and of the poet Samuel Rogers. For each collection there is an introductory essay, a catalogue raisonnée and a note of the most important items in the collection. This work is a fascinating and valuable guide to mid-nineteenth-century taste and fashion in art.