Arts

摘要

It is difficult for the reviewer to add anything to the plaudits that earlier editions of this work received. Beginning life in 1954 as A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1600-1840, and with later editions appearing under the present title in 1978 and 1995, this fourth edition adds 64 newly identified architects to the text as well as several hundred additional buildings. Many of the additional architects are chiefly of local interest, but they include one major discovery of a hitherto unknown gentleman architect, John Osborne (d. 1629) who, according to the Preface, "was making correct Vitruvian designs before the emergence of Inigo Jones as a classical architect". It is important to note that in order to include these new entries, a number have been dropped, being those whose practices were on or over the chronological borderline of 1840. Some libraries, therefore, may wish to keep the third edition alongside the new acquisition.