E. W. Godwin

Max Beerbohm described the architect Edward William Godwin (1833-86) as ‘the greatest of the aesthetes’. This, along with Godwin’s disdain for convention as the lover of Ellen Terry and friend of Oscar Wilde, has helped frame the discussion of his buildings, furniture, and decorative design. 

His early work as a Gothic Revivalist, including his design of Northampton Town Hall, is typically presented as an immature preamble to the striking simplicity of his 1870s studio-houses in Chelsea, including the White House for his friend Whistler.

This book, the first to look at his ideas through the prism of his architecture, demonstrates rather the continuities throughout his career: that all his design work – buildings, journalism, furniture, textiles and theatre – is informed by a set of principles that, although they evolved radically in their expression, remained remarkably consistent throughout his life, and informed throughout by his reading of John Ruskin.

To illustrate, there are many newly taken photographs by a leading architectural photographer, and drawings in the tradition of the Survey of London.