📚 Heraldry

Coats of arms read as evidence: blazon, rolls of arms, and the forgeries that came with wanting better ancestors.

Below are the 30 works carrying the subject heraldry in the Open Library catalogue with the most editions in print. Author and first year are as the record states them; a missing year means the record does not carry one, not that the book is undated. Novels set in the subject are left out, because a list of historical fiction is not a list of history. Where one author dominates the reprint counts, no more than two of their titles appear.

Cover	Title	Author	First published	Editions
	Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland	James Fairbairn	1850	59
	Messiah	George Frideric Handel	1750	45
	The peerage of England	Collins, Arthur	1709	25
	The general armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales	Sir Bernard Burke	1878	25
	A second series of vicissitudes of families	Sir Bernard Burke	1859	23
	A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland	John Burke Esq.	1846	22
	A Complete Guide to Heraldry	Arthur Charles Fox-Davies	1909	19
	The manual of heraldry	Francis James Grant	1904	18
	The peerage of Ireland	John Lodge	1789	16
	Heraldry	Charles Boutell	1950	16
	Complete baronetage (1611-1800)	George Edward Cokayne	1900	15
	English surnames	Mark Antony Lower	1842	14
	The Scottish nation	Anderson, William	1859	14
	The book of family crests	John Peter Elven	1882	14
	Heraldry for craftsmen & designers	Sir W. H. St. John (William Henry St. John) Hope	1913	14
	An introduction to heraldry	Hugh Clark	1829	13
	Royal book of crests of Great Britain & Ireland, Dominion of Canada, India & Australasia	James Fairbairn	1883	13
	Simple heraldry	Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk	1953	12
	County genealogies	William Berry	1830	11
	Heraldry in England	Anthony Richard Wagner	1946	11
	Brief guide to Kings & Queens of England and Great Britain	Eric R. Delderfield	1964	10
	Heraldry	Ottfried Neubecker	1976	10
	Workes of armorie	John Bossewell	1572	9
	The peerage of Ireland	John Lodge	1754	9
	A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank	John Burke Esq.	1833	9
	English heraldry	Charles Boutell	1867	9
	Handbook of heraldry	John Edwin Cussans	1869	9
	Armorial families	Arthur Charles Fox-Davies	1895	9
	The symbolisms of heraldry	William Cecil Wade	1898	9
	A grammar of English heraldry	Sir W. H. St. John (William Henry St. John) Hope	1913	9

List built from Open Library (CC0 metadata) · retrieved 03 Nov 2026 UTC · capped at 30 works per subject.

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