Main Content
Summary
Author: Freeman, Edward A.
Title: A history of architecture.
Publication: London, Joseph Masters 1849.
Price: £65
Reference: 10408
Full Description
8vo. xxviii + 456pp, woodcut frontispiece. Publisher's cloth, a little worn at extremities and unevenly faded. Frontispiece and title leaf slightly spotted, otherwise a good copy internally. Ink ownership inscription of E.P.Howard, 1884. Subsequently Jill Allibone's copy, with her bookplate.
This history of architecture by the future historian of the Norman Conquest and Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford is written from a mediaevalist point of view, in that the architecture of Greece and Rome is discussed only for its bearings on the origin of Romanesque architecture, while modern classical architecture is virtually disregarded. Freeman's own position was not however that of the Cambridge Camden Society, for he is appreciative of "Norman Romanesque" and held "a very strong opinion that on the whole Perpendicular is the best". This gives his book an individuality and he also has more of a feeling for the aesthetic qualities of mediaeval buildings than such older contemporaries as Whewell and Willis.