The English House, 1860-1914: The Flowering of English Domestic Architecture

This well-documented, though sometimes redundant, collaboration (Stamp, an architectural historian, wrote the text, which is generously illustrated with Goulancourt's photographs; a previous joint effort is AD London 1900 examines the revival of domestic architecture in lateVictorian Britain in light of the larger Arts and Crafts movement of the period. Stamp comprehensively explains how this simple, functional, indigenous, anti-urban, antimodern architectural form developed in reaction to excesses of the Industrial Revolution and mid-Victorian materialism, and how it was influenced by Romanticism and such writers as William Morris and John Ruskin. To his credit, he also reveals faults of the style, such as the use of traditional materials to suggest bogus antiquity. The work includes careful descriptions and photographs of 87many lovelybuildings, and brief biographies of 63 architects. (September 16)