ABSTRACT
British architectural theory before 1750 consists of a large body of writing on architecture in a variety of genres, such as the letter, the essay, the poem, the sermon or the manual offering practical instructions, but it rarely adopted the format of the classical treatise. On the Continent architectural theory had modelled itself, with only a few exceptions, on the only book-length treatment of classical architecture that had survived from Antiquity, Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture, written in the first century BC. Architectural theory was presented as a book-length, discursive statement of the first principles of classical architecture, aspiring to the status of a liberal art, and treating the topics included in Vitruvius' book. The contemplative variety of architectural theory is represented by fragments from Sir Henry Wotton's Elements of Architecture. Some of the earliest texts, Wotton's Elements of Architecture of 1624 and the anonymous De Templis of 1638, offer quite sophisticated and original statements of Renaissance architectural theory.
