The English house, 1860-1914 : the flowering of English domestic architecture /

This most rewarding survey of British domestic architecture of the Victorian era is based on an exhibition titled ``The English House, 18601914'' which in turn was inspired by the publication in 1979 of The English House, the first English translation of Hermann Muthesius's Das Englische Haus (190405), the classic work on late Victorian British architecture. Stamp, an architectural historian and coauthor (with Colin Amery) of Victorian Buildings in London (1980), writes a substantial introduction, tracing the revival of English vernacular architecture from Nash's cottage style to Lutyens's masterpiece Munstead Wood and Shaw's ``Queen Anne'' interpretations. The rest of the book describes 87 buildings by 63 architects. Brief biographies of each of the architects also are given. Most of the photographs by Andr;e Goulancourt, a gifted architectural photographer, are in black and white; they are crisp and elegant and somehow always impart the romantic grandeur or intimacy of each of the houses. Each section of the book is well annotated; the biographical section contains references to principal texts about each architect-biographee. This is a thorough history of a very important movement in domestic architecture, one which-with Muthesius's help-spread to the Continent and which also greatly influenced American vernacular architecture. Highly recommended for all architectural school libraries and for larger public and academic libraries.-B. Jacob, University of Minnesota

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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved