The Stones of Venice.: With Illustrations Drawn by the Author.

London: Smith, Elder, and Co.,, 1851-3. A celebrated treatise on aesthetic and design First edition of this key text of the aesthetic movement. Its "obsession with the function and aesthetics of architecture, over and beyond its history and practice, again proved a revolutionary success" (PMM). The work's importance lies "in its celebration of the Byzantine and the Gothic, which had an immediate effect on Victorian architects, who began to introduce Romanesque forms and Venetian and Veronese colour and sculptural features into their designs" (ODNB). The most famous chapter, "The Nature of Gothic", was twice separately reprinted in the author's lifetime, firstly for the inaguaration of the London Working Men's College in 1854, secondly by William Morris in 1892. In this chapter, "Ruskin argued that under conditions of industrialization and the division of labour, social disharmony and industrial unrest were bound to occur, because the previously expressive craftsman - Ruskin's ideal working man - had been reduced to the condition of a machine" (ODNB). Three volumes, imperial octavo. Original brown cloth, gilt-lettered spines stamped with gilt devices and blind floral column, covers with rules and wide floral roll in blind enclosing gilt centrepiece, brick-red endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. With 53 plates, including 5 chromolithographs by William Dickes, all with captions and tissue guards, after Ruskin by Thomas Lupton, J. C. Armytage, R. P. Cuff, and others; further illustrations in the text. Bound with rear ads in each volume and vol. I errata slip at rear. Book label of Philip Sheppard Jr of Hampton Manor House on front free endpaper versos, vol. I with his signature and slight abrasion to his label; front pastedown of vol. II with bookseller's ticket of Pocock, Bath. Expert repairs to spines and extremities, vol. II with rear free endpaper renewed, sporadic light foxing, presenting very well. Grolier English 100, 92; Printing and the Mind of Man 315 (for Ruskin).