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Summary
Author: Britton, John (and Jones, T.E.)
Title: The autobiography ... in three parts : viz. Part 1. Personal and literary memoir of the author. Part II. Descriptive account of his literary works. Part III. (Appendix) Biographical, topographical, critical and miscellaneous essays. Copiously illustrated.
Publication: London, printed for the author, as presents to subscribers to “The Britton Testimonial”, 1850.
Price: Sold
Reference: 10018
Full Description
4to. 3 parts in 1. Engraved frontispiece, engraved portrait of Britton, xii + (4) + 248 + (4)pp, 2 engraved plates and 2 tinted litho plates ; xv (incl engraved portrait frontispiece) + (1) + 130pp, 4 engraved plates ; engraved portrait frontispiece, iv + 190pp, 3 engraved plates and 1 tinted litho plate. There are also woodcut text ills. The volume also has bound in after Part I as usual, a copy of Jones, T.E., The Britton Testimonial. An account of a public dinner given to John Britton, F.S.A. at the Castle Hotel, Richmond, on the 74th anniversary of his birth, July 7, 1845 (etc), (London), “printed for the subscribers to the Testimonial” 1846, engraved frontispiece, xvi + 23 + (1)pp. Contemporary quarter morocco, marbled boards. Presentation copy from John Britton to T.G.B.Estcourt MP, with inscription dated 7 Jul 1850, and printed Estcourt Library label on front pastedown endpaper. A minor stain at inner lower blank corner of some of the engraved plates, but a particularly good, clean copy otherwise. One of 125 copies issued in this format (there were also 25 copies issued in a larger “imperial quarto” format, and 500 copies, with fewer engravings, issued in a separate octavo printing).
A good copy of the autobiography of John Britton (1771-1857), the self-educated antiquary and topographical writer whose illustrated books on mediaeval architecture and English cathedrals were an essential element in publicising the merits of the Gothic style in nineteenth century Britain. Although discursively written, Britton’s autobiography contains a mass of fascinating information about his early experiences in the London literary and theatrical world, as well as on the writing and publication of his architectural and topographical works, and in its third part he brings together the texts of a number of his more ephemeral essays and lectures, including projects for cenotaphs in Gothic Revival style for Lord Nelson and Thomas Chatterton (with accompanying illustrations of the designs). The second part, listing and describing each of Britton’s numerous publications, was not in fact written by Britton himself but by his literary secretary T.E.Jones, who was also responsible for an account of the testimonial dinner given for Britton in 1845, separately printed in 1846 but customarily bound up with sets of the autobiography, as here.
The present copy, a gift from Britton to Thomas Grimston Bucknall Estcourt, Conservative MP for Oxford University until 1847, represents the autobiography in its final issued form, with a general title leaf dated 1850, but the individual parts had been issued in the late 1840s, and in this copy parts 2 and 3 both retain part title leaves dated 1849. Complete sets are not at all easy to locate, and this is the first set in the quarto format that we have handled.