Langley, Batty & Thomas
Gothic Architecture
£819
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 8 February 2023 at 10:00 GMT
Description
improved by Rules and Proportions. In many Grand Designs of Columns, Doors, Windows, Chimney-Pieces, Arcades, Colonades [sic], Porticos, Umbrelos, Temples, and Pavillions etc. London: for John Millan, 1747. 4to (29.7 x 22cm), contemporary mottled calf gilt, engraved title-page, 2 pp. letterpress (headed 'On the Ancient Buildings in this Kingdom'; often lacking), 64 engraved plates, binding rubbed, spine-label perished, superficial cracking to joints in places [ESTC T132230; Harris 410]
Footnote
Note:
First edition, second issue, with a new title-page but retaining the plates from the first issue of 1741-2, which was published under the less explicit title Ancient Architecture, Restored, and Improved. 'An exceptional and original work, it was a pioneering attempt to give Gothic architecture the classical respectability of orders, motivated, as usual, by his interest in English freemasonry and handsomely engraved by his brother Thomas. Its novelty and light-hearted inventiveness, although scoffed at by amateur gothicists such as Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray, were just what many country squires wanted, prompting other architectural writers—William Halfpenny, T. C. Overton, and William Pain in particular—to follow Langley's lead' (ODNB).