Samuel and Nathaniel Buck | Buck's Antiquities..., London, 1774, first edition, 3 vols, contemporary calf

Samuel and Nathaniel Buck

Buck's Antiquities; or Venerable Remains of above four hundred Castles, Monasteries, Palaces. & c. & c. in England and Wales. Robert Sayer, 1774

3 volumes, folio (vols 1 and 2: 449 x 287mm.; vol.3: 448 x 453mm.), mezzotint double portrait of the Bucks by Richard Houston after Joseph Highmore, engraved allegorical additional title by Charles Grignion after Henri Gravelot, and double-page engraved general index map all in volume 1, descriptive text and list of plates in each volume, and 428 mostly full-page views of antiquities, castles and country houses, together with the rare series of 83 larger double-page panoramic views (including the panorama of London and Westminster on plates 41-45), in all 511 subjects, contemporary tree calf, morocco labels to spines, upper hinges of vols 1 and 3 split, morocco label detached from spine of vol.3, bindings rubbed

Samuel and Nathaniel Back's Antiquities forms an outstanding picture of eighteenth-century England and Wales, based on first-hand observation and survey over several decades from the 1720s. Their monumental work now provides us in the late twentienth century with an important and, on occasion, unique record of medieval and later buildings, many of which have either disappeared altogether, or have suffered alteration almost beyond recognition.

LITERATURE:

cf. RIBA I 454-469