Descrizione

First edition, folio (435 x 275 mm), 12pp., engraved portrait frontispiece of Gibbs by Hogarth, one further engraved portrait of Johannes Radcliffe, 21 engraved plates, a very good ex-library copy, frontis., portrait with repairs to corners, water-stain to fore-edge slightly encroaching into image, title a little dusty and creased, with repairs to corners, plates with light damp-stain to outer blank corners, last plate a little more so with a couple of minor closed tears, endpapers renewed, several blind-stamps, later brown buckram, uncut. The Radcliffe Library, better known as the Radcliffe Camera, designed by James Gibbs in neo-classical style and built in 1737-1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library, has been described as `Englandís most accomplished domed building and Gibbsís masterpieceí (Pevsner). Gibbs's account of it names the more important craftsmen employed - the masons were Townsend of Oxford and Smith of Warwick, Artari did the plasterwork and Rysbrack the sculpture - and the plates show elevations, sections and interior details. Harris, 256; RIBA, Early Printed Books, II: 1205; Fowler, 139.