Text: Mary E. Phillips, “Illustration,” Edgar Allan Poe: The Man (1926), illustration, vol. I, p. 134

Notes:

The original engraving was published in Select Views of London (London: Printed for R. Ackermann), 1816, plage 30, p. 70. It may have been previously published in Ackermann's Repository of Art, vol. 10, 1813. The engraving strongly resembles one done about the same time by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd, first published in 1815. Still later versions of the engraving, also by Shepherd, are very similar to the scene shown, but with some differences in the people and goings on in front of the building, with the addition of a man with a horse.

Montague House was the home of the old British Museum, beginning in 1759. It was demolished in 1840 to make way for the much larger building currently in use.