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Summary
Author: (Rudiments)
Title: The rudiments of ancient architecture, in two parts. Containing a historical account of the five orders ... also Vitruvius on the temples and intercolumniations ... calculated for the use of those who wish to attain a summary knowledge of the science of architecture. With a dictionary of terms.
Publication: London, "printed for I. & J.Taylor, at the Architectural Library, Holborn" 1789.
Price: £285
Reference: 11489
Full Description
8vo. (4) + vii + (1) + 84pp, 10 engraved plates including frontispiece, engraved vignette on title leaf. Quarter calf, marbled boards. Small stain at upper blank margin of frontispiece and title leaf, also some occasional light soiling. Erased eighteenth century ink ownership inscription on half title leaf, and an early nineteenth century ink ownership inscription on title leaf. Recently Sir Howard Colvin's copy, with his pencil ownership inscription.
First edition of this widely read introductory guide to the orders of architecture and to the principles of classical architecture generally, of which subsequent editions were to appear in 1794, 1804, 1810 and 1821. Its authorship has never been established, but the anonymous author describes himself on p.vii as having "a personal knowledge" of the architect James Stuart, and the compilers of the British Architectural Library Catalogue surmise that the author might have been the architect William Newton (1735-1790) (see BAL Cat 2871) ; Newton had then recently completed the editing of the second volume of Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens. This edition, scarcer than later editions, is not itself held in the British Architectural Library.