The complete set of 18 etchings with aquatint and drypoint, with the lithographic title-page, on heavy wove paper, without watermarks, plates 245 x 355 mm, sheets 308 x 438 mm, some dampstaining, a few corners creased or chipped, a few sheets with short mostly marginal tears or creases, title-page gutter margin recto and plate 4 gutter margin verso with old adhesive.  Disbound with remnants of stab-sewing and sewing holes (occasionally with short tears) in the gutter margin, modern wrappers with modern adhesive.

FIRST EDITION, one of 300 copies, of Goya's print series, completed in the years between 1815 and 1824.  The original series comprised 22 plates, which were left with Goya's son Xavier on his departure from Spain in 1824; they remained hidden until Xavier's death in 1854.  Eighteen passed through two different owners before the came to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1862, where they were published in this first, posthumous edition in 1864.  Four remaining plates were discovered in Paris in the early 1870s, and were eventually published in the periodical, L'Art, in 1877.  (Deltiel 202-219; Harris 248-265).