In "The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England," Pugin gives minutely detailed accounts with illustrations of his churches up to the year 1842. But his most revealing autobiographical writing is to be found in "Some Remarks," published in 1850, which can be seen as essential for understanding the man and his collapse.

This illustrated account of the impact of the English Gothic revival on American church architecture in the mid-nineteenth century finds that this fundamentally conservative movement provided the foundation for a new, influential aesthetic. With meticulous research and carefully chosen illustrations, Phoebe Stanton here explores the influence of the English Gothic revival on American church architecture in the mid-nineteenth century, arguing that this fundamentally conservative movement provided a foundation for a new aesthetic. Examining the writings of the movement's leading proponents as well as a variety of important buildings, Stanton offers a comprehensive survey of the architectural principles and models that became most influential in America. She also confirms the importance of the Cambridge Camden Society, which provided the theoretical atmosphere and practical examples that helped to establish new standards of excellence in American architecture.

First published in 1984. Signs for the Times explores imaginative and creative relationships between three major areas of mid-Victorian arts: literature, painting and architecture. Through the detailed critical analysis of particular novels, prose writings, paintings and buildings, Chris Brooks establishes a fusion of realistic and symbolic values that he sees as central to the Victorian creative imagination. He argues that the creative achievement of the mid-nineteenth century needs to be seen far more as a whole than it has previously, and that fundamental imaginative terms are common to art and architecture, to major theoretical writers such as Carlyle, Ruskin and Rugin as well as to the central literary figure of Dickens. All those interested in literature, art, or architecture will welcome this interpretation of symbolic realism within the mid-Victorian world.

This title explores the controversy surrounding the design of the new Foreign Office in London during Britain's Imperial heyday. In 1855 it was decided to build a new block of government offices in London, starting with the Foreign and War Offices. The government offices competition came at what was probably - looking back on it - the zenith of Britain's confidence as a nation and international power. One would expect the mid-Victorians to have felt, firstly, pride in their current national situation; and secondly, the urge to commemorate this in the most important national building to be projected in twenty years. Porter uses the debates surrounding the building of these important new monuments to interrogate the very fabric of British society, culture and nation building. The discussion on so many issues - religion, nationality, empire, history, modernism, truth, morality, gender - quite apart from considerations of 'pure' aesthetics, offers an unusual, perhaps even unique, insight into the relationship between these matters and the 'culture' of the time.