Folio (410 x 260 mm.). Eighteenth-century full calf gilt, the joints to the upper board cracked at top and bottom but sound, small areas of abrasion to the upper board and corners,all edges marbled; [xii]pp., comprising [i] Ware’s dedication to Burlington, (verso blank); [iii] ‘Advertisement’; [iv-vi] Palladio’s preface, followed by errata; [vii-ix] list of subscribers; [x] blank; [xi-xii] index of technical terms within the text of the four books, followed by errata; 110pp., comprising [1]-36, text of Book 1; [37]-56, text of Book 2; [57]-78, text of Book 3; [79]-110, text of Book 4, etched and engraved title plate repeated with alterations for the divisional titles of Books 2-4, four series of full-page plates, one for each Book, numbered VIII-XXXIV, I-LVIII, I-XXI, and I-XCIX. The first series continues from seven in-text engravings on 3 plates, numbered I-VII. Book 1 also contains 4 unnumbered engraved plates on pp. 12, 28, 29 and 30. Etched headpiece to the dedication by P. Foudrinier after William Kent, 1 engraved initial, wood-engraved tailpieces at the conclusions of Books 1-3, 1 large decorative tailpiece engraved by Ware after Kent at the end of Book 4.; a 2pp. autograph transcription in a neat eighteenth century hand, of excerpts from pages 307 and 308 of Christopher Wren Jnr.’s Parentalia of 1750; small neat closed tear to the lower margin of p.65, not affecting the text, a closed tear to the lower margin of p.105 just touching the text, otherwise a particularly bright, fresh copy.

Provenance: 1. Mathew Wilson (1772-1854) with his engraved armorial bookplate to the front pastedown. 2. Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785-1861), with her engraved armorial bookplate to the recto of the ffep. Currer was born on 3rd March 1785 at Eshton Hall, near Gargrave, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She was the posthumous daughter and sole heir of the Revd. Henry Richardson (1758–1784) who, shortly before his death, took the name of Currer on succeeding to the estates of Sarah Currer. Her mother was Margaret Clive Wilson (1764-1848), the only surviving child and heir of Matthew Wilson of Eshton Hall and a niece of Clive of India. On the 24th November 1800 Margaret married her cousin Mathew Wilson (see above), he thereby becoming Frances Mary’s stepfather.
Frances Mary Richardson Currer was a noted philanthropist and bibliophile, her library at Eshton Hall was said to contain around 20,000 volumes. The bibliophile Thomas Frognall Dibdin in A Bibliographical and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and in Scotland, 1838, described her library as “... consisting of two noble apartments, entirely filled with finely bound books,and extending some eighty feet in length, and twenty-five in width, by sixteen in height - to say nothing of a third library or book boudoir, at the extremity of the second, to the right ... I may honestly say that with the exception of Althorpe, Chatsworth and Stowe, I know of no such collection of books, situated in the country that can pretend to break a lance with it.” In 1857 the bulk of the library was bequeathed to her half-brother Mathew (1802-1891) but following Frances’s death in 1861 a great part of the library was dispersed at a sale the following year - the remaining volumes being sold in three further sales.
It is thought that Currer assisted the newly widowed Patrick Brontë in 1821 with a gift of £50. She is also known to have contributed funds to the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge that the Brontë sisters are known to have attended, albeit unhappily - these may be the reasons that Charlotte took the name "Currer" as part of her nom de plume on publishing Jane Eyre in 1847.
First edition of Isaac Ware’s English translation of Palladio’s I Quattro Libri, and the only one for almost two hundred and sixty years, until the publication in 1997 of Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield’s translation for the MIT Press. As Harris and Savage note ‘Ware’s translation was the most literally reliable of any; for this he was expressly indebted to Lord Burlington, who ‘with his own hands’ revised and corrected it. The plates however were entirely his work. He exactly traced and engraved them himself; but, although he was very much more faithful to the originals than Leoni had been, he did on occasion add a little shading of his own, and, in order to present a tidier appearance, separated plans and elevations that were overlapping in the Italian edition.’ (Eileen Harris assisted by Nicholas Savage. British Architectural Books And Writers 1556-1785. Cambridge, 1990).
Burlington’s library at Chiswick held three copies of the 1570 first edition of Palladio’s I Quattro Libri, as well as copies of later Italian, French and English editions - the latter group included a copy of Ware’s 1742 first edition of The First Book of Architecture and a copy of the present work.
The list of subscribers include Burlington, John, 5th Earl of Orrery, Sir Robert Walpole, Matthew Brettingham, Henry Flitcroft, Willliam Kent, Roger Morris, Thomas Ripley and John Wood [the Elder], William Hogarth Francis Hayman, and Samuel Johnson.
BAL Early Printed Books 1478-1840 2395; Fowler 229; Harris/Savage 691; Millard (British) 53

Stock number: 1637