Book Description

British Books is the second book in the series cataloguing more than six hundred rare illustrated books and bound series of prints on western European architecture, design, and topography, collected by the late Mark J. Millard. Among the books, all published between the end of the fifteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries, are numerous first or early editions. The almost one hundred titles catalogued in British Books trace the origins and development of architectural illustration in Britain. The collection is particularly rich in the eighteenth century, and includes almost all of the great folio albums recording the archaeological investigations of antiquity and most of the volumes documenting the architecture of Britain. These books, intended for the gentleman-amateur's library rather than the architect's office or builder's workshop, reveal the British sensitivity concerning properly architectural representation of buildings. Here, too, are practical treatises for construction, ornament patterns, surveys of monuments, views of buildings in situ, and topographical surveys. Included are works by Thomas Chippendale, John Neale, Humphry Repton, and Sir Christopher Wren.