Lethaby, W.R.
Architecture, nature & magic. With a biographical note by Alfred Powell.
London, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd 1956.
Full Description
8vo. 155 + (1)pp, 62 text ills. Publisher’s cloth, in dustwrapper (the wrapper abraded at upper and lower margins, with two minor old repairs). With enclosed postcard from John Betjeman, carrying a signed presentation inscription in his hand “to Miss M.Butler with best wishes for Christmas 1956” (Miss Butler was a friend and neighbour of the Betjemans in Wantage, Berkshire).
Lethaby’s Architecture Nature and Magic, serialised in the periodical The Builder for 1928 but not published in book form until the present edition of 1956, was a rewritten version of his early book Architecture Mysticism and Myth, originally published in 1892. It is one of the few serious explorations by a Western European architect of the role of ritual and myth in the architecture of Egypt and of other early civilisations.