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The publication of Shaftesbury’s ‘Letter Concerning Design’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Kerry Downes
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The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury’s Letter Concerning the Art, or Science of Design was finished early in 1712; Shaftesbury, abroad in Naples and already ailing, sent the manuscript to London, addressed to Lord Somers. Within a year the author was dead. In his last two years of life, Shaftesbury had been able not only to prepare for the press the second edition (London, John Darby, 1714) of his Characteristicks, first published in 1711, but also to put together a sequel which he entitled Second Characters. This new work was to consist of four essays, the first being the Letter Concerning Design and the second the Judgment of Hercules.

Type
Section 7: Recording and Criticism
Information
Architectural History , Volume 27: Design and Practice in British Architecture , 1984 , pp. 519 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984

References

Notes

1 Le Jugement d'Hercule (Journal des Sfavans, lii, 1712); A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature [etc.], 1713. Shaftesbury’s own intentions were not fully realized until the publication of Second Characters in the edition of B. Rand (Cambridge, 1914). The plan of the work appears from correspondence discussed in Rand’s introduction and from Shaftesbury’s own draft prefaces, printed there.

2 Second Characters, p. xii.

3 The 4th Earl’s biography was first printed in Bayle’s General Dictionary (1734-41). 1 have used the text in Rand, B. Life, Unpublished Letters . . . of Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury (New York, 1900) where the passage is on p. xxix.Google Scholar

4 See n. 1.

5 This is discussed by, among others, Hussey, C. in Jourdain, M. The Work of William Kent (1948), pp. 18ff.Google Scholar, and Downes, K. Hawksmoor (1959), pp. 33-36.Google Scholar

6 E.g. in Brett, R. L. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1951) where editions are listed up to 1737.Google Scholar

7 Downes, K. English Baroque Architecture (1966), p. 16.Google Scholar There the date is unaccountably given as 1731, an error repeated in idem., Vanbrugh (1977), p. 77.

8 This information, which is to be found in the BL Catalogue, was brought to the notice of architectural historians by Lang, S. in Jnt. Soc. of Architectural Historians, xxxvm (1979), p. 209.Google Scholar

9 The commonness of the work today comes from the multiplicity of editions rather than the size of each; probably they were all small, though Shaftesbury expected the second to consist of 800 to 1,000 (Rand, Life, Letters, p. 528). Many libraries have only the first or third (1723) edition, including some of those credited with the second in the National Union Catalog (American Library Association, Resources and Technical Services Division). I am indebted to all those who have helped with information, and notably the specialist staff of the libraries detailed in n. 10. The National Union Catalogue is the largest convenient source for locations, and there is nothing comparable for Great Britain. However, there is no reason to suppose that the British distribution differs significantly from the American. The Gregg Press reprint of 1968 is of a copy without the Letter.

10 In addition to copies in the British Library and Bodleian Library (inclusive) and Reading University (exclusive) which I have examined personally, I received details of those in the University of Colorado, Boulder, and University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (inclusive), and the following (exclusive); Edinburgh University; Leeds Public Library; Westfield College, London; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.; Princeton University; Northwestern University, Evanston, 111.; University of Illinois, Urbana; Cornell University; William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA; University of British Columbia, Vancouver; University of Chicago; Harvard University (3 copies); University of California at Berkeley; Stanford University (2 copies); Columbia University; Yale University; University of Cincinnati; Library of Congress.

11 It should be mentioned that in all known copies of the 1714 edition the colophon at the end of volume in is dated 1715.

12 In most copies these pages ate on thicker paper, in many cases now discoloured, but tbe whole of the British Library copy is on thick paper.

13 Signature Dd comprises 8 pages.

14 It is not easy, and perhaps not profitable, to argue from the stitching, since all four copies have been repaired if not rebound.

15 Nevertheless an error remained; the subscription of the Letter Concerning Design on p. 411 has ‘Your Lorship’s’ for ‘Your Lordship’s’.

16 The Reading copy alone has appended Darby’s eight-page catalogue, which offers the second edition as ‘with great Improvements’ and also ‘the same on fine Royal Paper’ of which the thick BL copy (see n. 12) may be an example. The second edition is not mentioned in the Monthly Catalogue of Books which started in May 1714, and it was not registered at Stationers’ Hall (kindly checked for me by Miss Robin Myers, rc\, Hon. Archivist to the Stationers’ and Newspaper Makers’ Company).

17 The editions of 1744 and 1749, which again lack the Letter, are a marginal issue, since they are in duodecimo with a Birmingham imprint.

18 Shaftesbury considered Darby niggardly and artful, pinching ‘in everything, ink, paper, character, whenever he can save’ (Life, Letters, p. 464). The insertion was not made from sheets printed for the 1732 edition, which are differently set.