BURKE, Edmund.

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1757. FIRST EDITION 1 blank leaf + half-title + TP + [v]-viii = Preface + [ix]-[xvi] = Contents + [1]-184 + 1 blank leaf, small Octavo."Burke's book On the Sublime and the Beautiful is more important [than A Vindication of Natural Society]; indeed, it might well be said to signalize the point at which aesthetic taste in England changed from the classical formalism of the earlier years of the eighteenth century to the romanticism of the later years. Burke attacked the rationalist, classicist notion that clarity is an essential quality in great art. He argued that the imagination, moreover, is most strongly affected by what is suggested or hinted at and not by what is plainly stated. Burke also maintained that fear plays a large part in our enjoyment of the sublime. Such fear is diminished by knowledge, but sharpened by veiled intimations. Obscurity, not clarity, is the property of the most powerfully moving art; and Burke added, 'It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.'" (EP, Vol. 1, pp. 429-430) Three-quarter mid-19th-century (?) brown speckled leather with marbled boards. Spine with gilt bands and gilt lettering and date. Spine edges lightly worn as are the corners of the boards. The binding is particularly solid and the pages remarkably clean. A small oval bookplate has been partially removed from the inside front cover. With "Raynton Binder, Bath, Eng." hand lettered in tiny ink letters on the top edge of the verso of the front fly leaf. A beautiful copy of an imporatn book on beauty. PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

• USD 4,000.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: 210

• bookseller: Athena Rare Books (USA)