c1890 Picturesque Europe: The British Isles Antiquarian Illustrated History Book

c1890 Picturesque Europe: The British Isles Antiquarian Illustrated History Book

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Condition: Good

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c1890 Picturesque Europe: The British Isles Antiquarian Illustrated History Book

Picturesque Europe: The British Isles
With Illustrations On Steel And Wood By The Most Eminent Artists (Birket Foster etc)
Published by Cassell & Company Limited: London, Paris, Melbourne etc c1890 (undated)

" Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's leisured travellers to examine "the face of a country by the rules of picturesque beauty". Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.

The term "picturesque" needs to be understood in relationship to two other aesthetic ideals: the beautiful and the sublime. By the last third of the 18th century, Enlightenment and rationalist ideas about aesthetics were being challenged by looking at the experiences of beauty and sublimity as non-rational. Aesthetic experience was not just a rational decision - one did not look at a pleasing curved form and decide it was beautiful; rather it came naturally as a matter of basic human instinct. Edmund Burke in his 1757, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, argued that the soft gentle curves appealed to the male sexual desire, while the sublime horrors appealed to our desires for self-preservation. Picturesque arose as a mediator between these opposed ideals of beauty and the sublime, showing the possibilities that existed between these two rationally idealised states."

General wear and fading to covers with some rub through as shown. Outer spine with minor loss head/tail as shown. Lacks front blue endpaper and rear blue endpaper sits loose. There are no other loose pages and the binding is in excellent condition, particularly for a large heavy volume such as this. Pages are generally clean, plates present beautifully with only minor age marking and most tissue pages intact. Very minor spotting to prelims. All plates present as per index. A nice clean copy that presents very well and is in good to very good condition overall. Please study photos to further understand condition.

Size 32cm x 25cm x 6cm - 288 Pages + Publishers Advertising

PRODUCT DETAILS


Condition: Good
Binding: Cloth
Special Attributes: ["Illustrated", "Large Print", "Gilt Edged", "Plate Engravings", "Decorated Cloth Bindings"]
Region: Europe
Subject: History
Original/Facsimile: Original
Seller Notes: General wear and fading to covers with some rub through as shown. Outer spine with minor loss head/tail as shown. Lacks front blue endpaper and rear blue endpaper sits loose. There are no other loose pages and the binding is in excellent condition, particularly for a large heavy volume such as this. Pages are generally clean, plates present beautifully with only minor age marking and most tissue pages intact. All plates present as per index. A nice clean copy that presents very well and is in good to very good condition overall. Please study photos to further understand condition.
Language: English
Author: Cassell & Company Limited: London, Paris, Melbourne
Publisher: Cassell & Company Limited: London, Paris, Melbourne
Year Printed: 1890
Sub-subject: Picturesque Europe 1890