Delineations of Fonthill and its Abbey. RUTTER (John).

Handcoloured engraved frontispiece, additional title and plate, ten black and white plates and folding map by Wolstenholme, Havell, Cleghorn, Varrall and Higham after Finley, Porden, Rutter, Cattermole, Whitwell, Martin, Higham and Baker; woodcut arms on the title and woodcut head and tail pieces and colophon.

First Edition. 4to. [281 x 219 x 21 mm]. [iii]-xxvi, 127, [1] pp. Bound c.1950 in half brown goatskin, marbled paper sides, lettered on a blue goatskin label, light blue endleaves, plain edges. (Upper joint a little rubbed).

Shaftesbury: published by the Author. London: by Charles Knight and Co; Longman, Hurst and Co; Hurst, Robinson and Co; John and Arthur Arch, 1823.

Abbey, Scenery, 418.

This is an ordinary or small paper copy. With the additional unnumbered plate of the South West View of Fonthill Abbey. Bound without the half-title. Short and clean tear in middle fold of the map. A few spots and minor stains but a decent copy.

Rutter's Delineations was the best contemporary publication on William Beckford's extravagantly Gothic house at Fonthill, built for him by James Wyatt between 1796 and 1812. The book was begun when the house still belonged to Beckford, but was completed after the sale to John Farquhar, and it is a remarkably vivid portrait of the place in the closing days of Beckford's occupancy and before its collapse.

Stock no. ebc8275