(SEELEY, B.) STOWE: A DESCRIPTION OF THE MAGNIFICENT HOUSE AND GARDENS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD EARL TEMPLE.

(GUIDE BOOK)  (SEELEY, B.) STOWE: A DESCRIPTION OF THE MAGNIFICENT HOUSE AND GARDENS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD EARL TEMPLE.                  

London: J. Rivington, and B. Seeley, 1756. 8vo. Contemporary blue boards. Folding frontispiece map, engraved dedication leaf, 32 pages, 11 engraved plates, 1 of which is folding.

An early edition of this popular guide book regularly updated and printed through the eighteenth century.  This was one of the first printed guide books devoted to the English country house and garden.  The plates in this edition are all dated 1750 indicating they are the original plates from this book.  Published with dramatically different content throughout the eighteenth century, the 1783 and 1797 editions were owned by Thomas Jefferson who also recommended it for the newly created library at the University of Virginia.  He copied many gardening ideas from them, most particularly William Kent's use of meanders.   The book was priced at "one shilling with the plan, without sixpence; or with the Views of all the Temples and Ornamental Buildings in the said Garden, four shillings bound."  Contemporary signature inside of front board; later bookplate of Morley Jeffers Williams, who was the landscape architect for the Garden Club of Virginia who recreated the gardens of prominent Virginians such as George Mason and also the gardens at the University of Virginia.  Professionally respined in calf; original blue boards rubbed, else very good.

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