Observations on Several Parts of Great Britain, Particularly the High-Lands of Scotland, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1776. by Gilpin, William

London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1808. Third edition, in two volumes (xxviii, 221; viii, 195, adverts). Illustrated with nearly forty aquatints by Alkin after pen and ink sketches by Gilpin. Not a matched set: Volume I (23cm) in contemporary half morocco over marbled paper, gilt decoration to spine; Volume II (23.5cm) in new brown cloth over complimentary marbled paper. Both bear the stamp of the Boston Public Library on the title page and in the margins of the aquatints. The text and plates are, however, especially clean and bright throughout the two volumes. The contents are useful and attractive sources for investigators of the aesthetic of the picturesque who will discover, for example, that many of Gilpin’s drawings and the aquatints which issued from them were, shall we say, generic representations of actual scenes. One would have been hard pressed to identify them from Gilpin’s portrayals of them.  Two useful, if unmatched, volumes.