A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The eighth edition. With an introductory discourse concerning taste, and several other additions.

A handsome copy in contemporary tree-calf of Edmund Burke's (c.1729-1797) essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. 'It argued that the instinct for self-preservation was associated with apprehensions of pain and danger and thereby with a sense of the sublime. Instinctive sociability, by contrast, was associated with pleasure and a sense of beauty. On these simple foundations Burke erected a plausible account of various aspects of human sensibility, and obtained an appreciative audience which lasted well into the early nineteenth century. In Britain his doctrine of the sublime fuelled growing interest in the pictorial and literary appeal of landscape. His work also attracted attention on the continent. Kant described Burke as "the foremost author" in "the empirical exposition of aesthetic judgments" (Writings and Speeches, 1.187—8). His enduring achievement was to have tackled a difficult subject in a fashion accessible to any educated reader' (ODNB). Eighth edition; 8vo (22 x 14 cm); ink stamp to front endpaper and head margin of title-page, occasional light spotting; contemporary tree calf, gilt spine in 6 compartments, contrasting brown morocco lettering-piece to second, only slight wear, a near fine example; ix, [7], 342pp. ESTC T42256; Todd 5H.…