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Summary
Author: Webb, John
Title: An historical essay endeavoring a probability that the language of the empire of China is the primitive language.
Publication: London,"printed for Nath,Brook, at the Angel in Gresham Colledge" 1669.
Price: £1,900
Reference: 10027
Full Description
8vo. (8) + 212 + (2)pp (without the accompanying folding engraved map). Title printed in red and black. Contemporary full calf. Title leaf slightly browned and a small stain in outer blank margin of last three leaves. From the library of the Earls of Macclesfield, with their mid ineteenth century armorial bookplate, dated 1860, and their armorial blindstamp towards top of first two leaves (as customary with books from this library).
First edition of this remarkable publication by John Webb (1611-1672), Inigo Jones's pupil, architectural assistant and professional successor. In his independent architectural career since the 1650s Webb had had both successes and disappointments, but his executed buildings show that he was an adept handler of the Palladian style of architecture introduced into England by Inigo Jones, and his inheritance from Jones both of Jones's drawings and of Jones's library of printed books provided him with the best reference archive of any English architect of his generation. By 1669 Webb's career as an architect was drawing to a close and this evidently gave him the leisure to write the present book, in which he argues that the Chinese language was essentially the same language that was spoken throughout the world before Noah's flood, and also provides an extensive discussion of Chinese culture and of the remote origins of the Chinese empire.