The Stones of Venice.: With Illustrations Drawn by the Author.

London: Smith, Elder, and Co.,, 1874. The "Autograph edition", owned by an ancestor of a Ruskin acquaintance Signed limited edition, one of 1,500 sets signed by the author at the end of the new preface. The first volume features the ownership inscription, "In 1853, Ruskin sent a copy of Stones of Venice to my ancestor Thomas Guthrie (with a letter in which he said 'you must be accustomed to people getting very seriously & truly attached to you at first sight...'"). The Scottish divine Guthrie (1803-1873) was leading service when Ruskin attended St John's Free Church, Edinburgh, in the winter of 1853. Ruskin's letter to Guthrie also came with an enclosed charitable donation from himself and his father, whose native city was Edinburgh, for the town's poor (Memoir, pp. 321-2). Guthrie's descendent, the former owner of this set, is the Scottish professor of architecture John Maule McKean (b. 1943), former editor of the Architects' Journal, head of interior architecture at the University of Brighton, and design history tutor at the London College of Printing. McKean has contributed to publications including Architecture of the Western World (1980) and The Principles of Architecture (1983). His ownership inscriptions, dated 1971, appear in red or blue ink on the front free endpapers verso; the book label of John and Jamoula McKean is on the front pastedowns. This key text of the aesthetic movement was first published from 1851 to 1853. Its "obsession with the function and aesthetics of architecture, over and beyond its history and practice, again proved a revolutionary success" (PMM). The work's importance lies "in its celebration of the Byzantine and the Gothic, which had an immediate effect on Victorian architects, who began to introduce Romanesque forms and Venetian and Veronese colour and sculptural features into their designs" (ODNB). The most famous chapter, "The Nature of Gothic" (II, pp. 151-231), was twice separately reprinted in the author's lifetime, firstly for the inaguaration of the London Working Men's College in 1854, secondly by William Morris in 1892. In this chapter, "Ruskin argued that under conditions of industrialization and the division of labour, social disharmony and industrial unrest were bound to occur, because the previously expressive craftsman - Ruskin's ideal working man - had been reduced to the condition of a machine" (ODNB). Three volumes, imperial octavo. Original brown cloth, gilt-lettered spines stamped with gilt devices and blind floral column, covers with rules and wide floral roll in blind enclosing gilt centrepiece, purple endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. With 53 captioned and tissue-guarded plates, including 5 chromolithographs by William Dickes, after Ruskin by Thomas Lupton, J. C. Armytage, R. P. Cuff, and others. Further illustrations in the text. Pencilled ownership inscription of one Edward Banks, dated 1881, to front free endpapers verso. Spine ends slightly frayed, wear to corners, inner hinges partly split but sound, front free endpaper of vol. II with closed tear, light internal foxing. A very good set. Grolier English 100, 92 (for first edition); Printing and the Mind of Man 315 (for Ruskin). Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie, and Memoir, 1875.