1887 England, Scotland & Ireland Picturesque Antiquarian British History Book

1887 England, Scotland & Ireland Picturesque Antiquarian British History Book

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Condition: Good

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England, Scotland & Ireland Picturesque - 1887 - Antique British History Book

England, Scotland And Ireland. A Picturesque Survey Of The United Kingdom And Its Institutions - With 600 Illustrations

By P. Villars

Published by George Routledge And Sons: London 1887 1st Edition


"Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's leisured travellers to examine "the face of a country by the rules of picturesque beauty". Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.

The term "picturesque" needs to be understood in relationship to two other aesthetic ideals: the beautiful and the sublime. By the last third of the 18th century, Enlightenment and rationalist ideas about aesthetics were being challenged by looking at the experiences of beauty and sublimity as non-rational. Aesthetic experience was not just a rational decision - one did not look at a pleasing curved form and decide it was beautiful; rather it came naturally as a matter of basic human instinct. Edmund Burke in his 1757, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, argued that the soft gentle curves appealed to the male sexual desire, while the sublime horrors appealed to our desires for self-preservation. Picturesque arose as a mediator between these opposed ideals of beauty and the sublime, showing the possibilities that existed between these two rationally idealised states."

A spectacular spine and cover with minor wear as shown. No inscriptions or library marks. Inside hinges split with webbing showing. Boards are wobbly and heavy text block has sagged inside the cover. A particularly clean copy with only light sporadic foxing with the vast majority of the book crisp, clean and bright. Good condition overall. Please study photos to understand condition. Happy to provide more photos on request.

Size 30.5cm x 22cm x 5cm

PRODUCT DETAILS


Condition: Good
Binding: Hardcover
Special Attributes: ["1st Edition", "Illustrated", "Gilt Edged"]
Region: Europe
Subject: History
Original/Facsimile: Original
Seller Notes: A spectacular spine and cover with minor wear as shown. No inscriptions or library marks. Inside hinges split with webbing showing. Boards are wobbly and heavy text block has sagged inside the cover. A particularly clean copy with only light sporadic foxing with the vast majority of the book crisp, clean and bright. Good condition overall. Please study photos to understand condition. Happy to provide more photos on request.
Language: English
Author: P. Villars
Publisher: George Routledge And Sons: London
Year Printed: 1887
Sub-subject: United Kingdom