Elements of Criticism.
In three Volumes.
Edinburgh: printed for A. Millar, London; and A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh, 1762 Stock Code: 94906
First edition of Kames's large and systematic philosophical and aesthetic treatise, rare on the market. This work is the most important result of the Scottish aesthetic movement, and "the most comprehensive work on aesthetics of the 18th century since Du Bos' Réflexions critiques of 1719" (translated from Dobai, Die Kunstliteratur des Klassizismus und der Romantik in England II, p. 115). Kames's Elements of Criticsm (1762) "became a textbook in rhetoric and belles-lettres for a century, not least in America" (The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century Philosophers). Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the third edition in his library (Sowerby 4699.)
Description
3 volumes, octavo (211 x 122 mm). Contemporary marbled boards, rebacked and recornered in calf, blindstamp rules to spines, direct lettered gilt.
Condition
Ownership inscription of one John McRae, Sunderland, dated 1858 to free endpapers of volumes 2 and 3 (that of volume 1 removed). Board edges rubbed, with some loss of marbled paper, free endpaper to volume 1 replaced. Intermittent light spotting and the occasional pencil side rule. A very good copy.
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