Lancelot Addison. The Present State of the Jews: (More Particularly Relating to those in Barbary) Wherein is Contained an Exact Account of their Customs, Secular and Religious, to which is Annexed a Summary Discourse of the Misna, Talmud, and Gemara.

Lancelot Addison (1632-1703) educated at Queen's College, Oxford, served (1662-70) as chaplain of the garrison at Tangiers. His sojourn there afforded him exceptional opportunities for the study of alien customs and habits. An inquiring and sympathetic bent of mind induced Addison to became sufficiently interested in the condition of the Jews to produce the present work. Despite the Re-admission of the Jews to England in 1656, there was a total lack of pictorial evidence of them. Hence the publisher borrowed the present frontispiece from another work concerning an entirely different subject. (See Rubens, Jewish Iconography no. 1893).