Treatise on Landscape Design

VARLEY, John.  TREATISE ON THE PRINCIPLES OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN, bound with Varley's LIST OF COLOURS, and Varley's A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON PERSPECTIVE.

London: J. Varley, (1815-1817). Oblong folio. (10 1/2 x 15 inches). Contemporary cloth spine, boards, with printed label on front board. (35) pages, including 14 aquatint plates, affixed to 18 leaves. First edition, first issue. [See, Abbey, Life, 187].

This is a compilation of all the works written and published by John Varley (1778-1842) through 1820.  Issued without a title page for which a printed cover label (present here) serves as a substitute, the work was designed to be completed in twelve parts, but only five were ever produced.  Our copy has fourteen fine aquatint plates, which correspond with those listed in Abbey, except that in several instances our images seem to be earlier issues, sent through the press before titles and the engraver's name, both mentioned by Abbey, were added to the plates.  Perhaps because of this, the images are exceptionally fresh.  According to Abbey, all fourteen plates were engraved by F.C. Lewis, whose name appears on several of ours.  Two later plates with accompanying text, dated 1821, were engraved by J. Gleadah, and are not included in our set, which seems to have been assembled prior to this date.  Our set does include two items not in Abbey's.  These are: Varley's List of Colours (1816), two leaves containing nineteen hand-colored samples of colors; and Varley's A Practical Treatise on Perspective, two four-column leaves of text and one engraved plate (measuring approximately 12 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches and dated 1 December 1815).  Both of these works were noted on the cover label but were later omitted from Landscape Design and issued as separate works.  There are both quite rare:  neither Copac or OCLC cite the List of Colours and OCLC lists only three copies for the work on Perspective, although this book was later republished in America in 1819 by Fielding, Lucas, in Baltimore.  There seems to be confusion also about later issues of Landscape Design.  Even Abbey's copy, the one that most resembles our set of original parts, is dated in the bibliography as 1823 but is on 1849 Whatman paper.  Duh?  The publisher is noted as being Sherwood, Gilper and Piper, who is also credited with an 1833 edition, but the 1833 edition is described as having only eighteen pages of text and eight plates (a description consistant with the recent microfiche copy also listed in OCLC).  Our copy is bound in an amaturish manner but has done an admiral job in protecting its contents.

$8,500.00