A New and Compleat System of Architecture Delineated, in a Variety of Plans and Elevations of Designs for Convenient and Decorated Houses. Together with Offices and Out-Buildings Proportioned Thereto, and Appropriated to the Several Uses and Situations Required

London: John Brindley, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, in New Bond-Street, 1749. Oblong 4to. (8 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches). First edition. [6] 1-25 [1]. 32 pp. 47 copper engraved plates interspersed, 2 folding at rear. Title, Preface, Variety of New Plans. Printer's ornament on letter-press title. Quarter calf with tips bound to style in the 18th century over comb marbled paper boards. Spine with five raised gilt-ruled bands forming six compartments with gilt red morocco lettering-piece in second and gilt acorn center tool in rest, fore-edge and bottom margins uncut

First edition of William Halfpenny's influential book of 18th-century (truncated) architectural plans, complete with all 47 engravings.

William Halfpenny was an English architect in the first half of the 18th century, whose earliest known project was the Holy Church Trinity in Leeds (1723). But Halfpenny's main importance lies in his prolific writing and publishing of pattern books. His books are focused on the practical information a builder or carpenter would need, but he also positioned the works to "gentleman draughtsmen" intent on designing their own houses. Halfpenny's influential books were often the blue-print for 18th-century American houses and their detailing, including Mount Clare in Baltimore County, Maryland, and the Chase-Lloyd House in Annapolis, Maryland. This book's engravings by Richard Parr after Halfpenny are beautifully presented and assiduously described in the text. Halfpenny's first intention for Compleat System, as he suggests in the preface, "was to publish only fifteen designs for small edifices; but the approbation that these received from friends, such as Robert Morris, encouraged him to add sixteen more designs for progressively larger houses." [Harris] Also important to Halfpenny was accessibility. He produced "eminently affordable pattern books, complete with dimensions and estimates, expressly intended to enable 'workmen at a distance from the Metropolis' to erect all manner of rural buildings in a wide variety of materials and in all the latest fashions at little cost." [ODNB] The book's final, and perhaps most attractive plate, which depicts Westminster Bridge and is unrelated to the rest of the work, was included in response to the controversies over the bridge at that time.

Archer 133.1. ESTC T78316. Harris 294. ODNB. RIBA 1440. (Inventory #: 41625)