An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty, etc.

Frances Reynolds and James Lowry Clifford

Sir Joshua Reynolds lectured on art; his sister Frances quietly wrote her own theory. Her enquiry traces our ideas of beauty through common sense, truth, grace, and sublimity, a rare published venture in aesthetics by an eighteenth century woman, and Samuel Johnson counted among her circle. Recover a voice the age nearly lost, in her own careful words.