First published in 1757, this is the fifth edition of Edmund Burke's Enquiry into the Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Burke was born and brought up in Ireland before travelling to London in 1750 to study law at Middle Temple. He did not enjoy studying and soon began to focus on his literary interests and travelled often.

The Enquiry was an attempt to analyse aesthetics and to split them into rational categories. Burke viewed aesthetics as belonging to two main themes: the masculine sublime and the feminine beautiful. For Burke, the sublime was a feeling associated with pain, terror and the need for self-preservation. Sublime objects were those that evoked a sense of awe due to their ominous presence, for example, mountains, cliffs, thunderstorms and ruins. In contrast, beautiful objects were those things associated with pleasure and comfort.

It was an influential treatise, and, in Britain, it came to inspire picturesque ideas of landscapes throughout the late eighteenth century, motivating artists and writers alike to search for locations that best combined both categories.