THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF STONEHENGE: FOLIO LARGE-PAPER COPY OF INIGO JONES’ IMPORTANT ILLUSTRATED WORK—“JONES LOOKED AT STONEHENGE WITH AN ARCHITECT’S EYES… FASCINATING”

JONES, Inigo. The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain, Vulgarly Called Stone-Heng on Salisbury Plain, Restored. ISSUED WITH: CHARLETON, Walter. Chorea Gigantum. ISSUED WITH: WEBB, John. A Vindication of Stone-Heng Restored. London: D. Browne, J. Woodman and D. Lyon, 1725. Three works in one volume. Tall folio (9-1/2 by 14 inches), period style half calf gilt, red morocco spine label, raised bands.

Second edition of the first comprehensive study of Stonehenge, illustrated with two engraved portraits, 14 plates (three double-page, five folding) and 12 engraved vignettes—an excellent large-paper copy.

Inigo Jones, often called “the English Palladio,” was surveyor of works to James I and Charles I and designer of court masques and architect of royal buildings during their reigns. “In 1620 James I… commanded Jones to investigate the history of Stonehenge. [His son-in-law John] Webb found ‘some few undigested notes’ on the subject after Jones’s death, and at the solicitation of Harvey the physician and of Selden issued in folio in 1655 [this work]… Jones’s theory was that Stonehenge was a Roman temple, which, ‘if not founded by Agricola,’ yet was erected ‘in the times somewhat after his government,’ and was dedicated to the god Coelus, and he noticed in the monument a mixture of certain proportions proper to Corinthian and Tuscan work, together with the plainness and solidity of the latter order” (DNB). “Inigo Jones looked at Stonehenge with an architect’s eyes, considered it as an architectural puzzle, and produced some architecturally oriented conclusions that were as closely reasoned as they were—inevitably—wrong. His book is a fascinating document, a perfect gold mine of perceptive observation, shrewd analysis, miscellaneous information… and first-rate lore-based logic… There had been other 17th-century theories about Stonehenge… But the Jones theory… stirred the most controversy” (Hawkins, 8-11). Of the extremely scarce first edition “there were but few copies printed, and most of them lost in the fire of London” (Lowndes, 1225); the first edition also contained only seven folding plates and three woodcuts. This work is also noted for containing virtually the only early biographical material available on Jones. With red- and black-printed general title page, separate title pages for each individually paginated work. Engraved ornamental initials, head- and tailpieces. Occasional mispagination as issued without loss of text; without rear advertisement leaf. Fowler 159 (the Fowler copy stands 13-1/2 inches tall; the present large-paper copy stands 14 inches tall). Lowndes, 1225. Wing J954.