[Photobook] Moor Park Rickmansworth: A Series of Photographs. With an introduction by Lady Ebury

London: Elkin Matthews, Cork Street, 1915. First Edition. Fine. One of Coburn's "most exquisite interpretations" (Newhall), with twenty photogravures in the pictorialist style of the "grandest 18th-century mansion in Hertfordshire taken" (Pevsner), made while Coburn was teaching photography to Moor Park's owner, Lady Emilie Ebury. With an introduction by Lady Ebury and an afterward by William Temple, reprinted from the folio edition of his works published in 1740, describing the formal gardens, of which nothing remained in Coburn's day. Squarish 8vo (225 x 179mm): 55,[1]pp, chiefly photogravures mounted on rectos only. The letterpress is by the Chiswick Press. Original olive-green paper-covered boards printed in black, fore- and bottom edges untrimmed. An extraordinarily bright, clean, fresh copy, firmly bound and unmarked. Despite the commercial imprint, the book looks privately published, as though intended for family members, close friends, and departing house guests. Imagining Paradise, p. 238. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire, pp. 251-52. Coburn (Autobiography), p. 141. The great house's foundations can be traced to the early seventeenth century, but its present appearance goes back to Benjamin Haskins-Stiles, who bought the mansion in 1720, had it refaced with Portland stone, and added a great Corinthian portico. In 1752, the house passed to Admiral Lord Anson, who commissioned Capability Brown to remake the formal gardens in sweeping "landscape style." The 20 photogravures comprise interior and exterior views of ancient country house, its doorways and mantels, its gardens and deer park. Four years after the final photographs were taken, Moor Park was again sold and is now a golf club. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).