The Gentleman Farmer. Being an Attempt to improve Agriculture, By subjecting it to the Test...
Three engraved plates. xxvi (i.e. xxiv), 409 pp., one leaf of ads. 8vo, cont. calf (covers a little stained), spine gilt, red morocco lettering piece on spine. Edinburgh: W. Creech & T. Cadell, 1776.
First edition. Home (1696-1782), a leading judge in Scotland and the author of several legal and agricultural works, counted James Boswell (who had an affair with Home’s daughter Jean), David Hume, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Franklin as friends.
In 1766, Home’s wife inherited the estate Blair Drummond in Perthshire. “This estate was to provide a focus of Kames’s quest for agricultural improvement, setting in train a.... More