Isaac Ware

[2] Ware was born to a life of poverty, living as a street urchin and working as a chimney sweep, until he was adopted by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington at the age of eight (in about 1712) after which he was groomed and educated as a young nobleman.

)[3] He was apprenticed to Thomas Ripley, 1 August 1721, and followed him in positions in the Office of Works, but his mentor in design was Lord Burlington.

Ware's version of the Four Books of Architecture remained the best English translation into the twentieth century in the opinion of Howard Colvin.

"Having thoroughly assimilated Palladian theory", wrote Colvin "he looked beyond it, and in the 1740s himself helped to dissolve the dictatorship of taste that Burlington imposed in the 1720s.

It was described by John Summerson as "ably compiled, reflecting very fairly the solid, thoughtful competence of its author's executed works".