gardens

First edition of this serially issued country house book with fine engraved plates by Birrell, Walker, Ellis, Fittler, Heath, among others, after E.F. Burney, Corbould, Dayes, Robert Nixon and others. The engraved title includes a fine vignette of Harrison’s book and print shop in Paternoster Row. It was issued monthly, with four plates per issue at 3 shillings, and printed on ‘real Superfine French Colombier Paper’ (advert in London Gazette, 10-14 October, 1786).
The houses illustrated and described range from the most opulent (including Blenheim palace) to more humble gentry houses. Included are Garrick’s Hampton House, Piozzi’s Thrale Place, William Pitt’s Holwood House, Lady Diana Beauclerk’s Twickenham Meadows, Charles Dashwood’s West Wycombe Park and Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. The engravings are valuable records of both architectural, landscape and garden details and were widely imitated, not least on contemporary ceramics, while the descriptions contain useful details of architects, garden designs, landscape features such as rivers and lakes, and fine art collections — they are not always entirely complimentary. Upcott p. xxxiv. For Harrison’s bookshop see Raven, ‘Location, Size and Succession: The Book shops of Paternoster Row before 1800’ in The London Book Trade, eds. Myers, Robin; Harris, Michael & Mandelbrote, Giles (London, 2003), pp 89-126.

First edition of one of the most influential works of French garden theory. Morel was the father of landscape gardening in France, best known for the Théorie des Jardins and for his work with the marquis de Giradin in the celebrated garden at Ermenonville, and later at Malmaison. Morel never travelled to England, but was clearly influenced by theories of landscape being developed there. The title here bears a quote from Milton: ‘In narrow room nature’s Whole Wealth, yea more / A heav’n on earth...’ (Paradise Lost IV).