[Rarebooks] fa: GEORGE MASON - AN ESSAY ON DESIGN IN GARDENING - 1795

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending MONDAY, May 28. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/btsuvun

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



George Mason: An Essay on Design in Gardening, First published in MDCCLXVIII. Now greatly augmented. Also a revisal of several later publications on the same subject. London: Printed by C. Roworth, for Benjamin and John White, Fleet-Street, MDCCXCV [1795]. First edition thus. Bound in period tree calf, rebacked; 8vo (21.5 cm); xi + [1] + 215 + [1] pp.; with the half-title page. ESTC T96762.

Some bumping and wear to the corners, joints professionally repaired; faint intermittent damp-stain to the edges of the leaves, a few occasional small spots; otherwise quite clean and crisp, firmly bound. Front blank endpaper with the early ownership signature of Jonathan Barnes and two others.

Generally considered the "best" edition of this influential work on the aesthetics of landscape and the garden, first printed as a pamphlet of 54 pages, here revised, expanded and augmented with, among other things, a 60-page Revisal [i.e., review] of Some Late Publications upon Gardening. Includes sections on Greek, Roman and British Gardening; vistas, fences, shrubberies, plantations, garden architecture; discussions of William Kent, Humphry Repton, Capability Brown ("an egregious mannerist"), Shenstone, Walpole, and many others. George Mason  (1735-1806) was a wealthy collector and miscellaneous writer who, through the inheritance of a number of large estates, became an accomplished (and opinionated) amateur landscape gardener in his own right.