A fully documented study of the architect Sir John Soane, with the text of his principal lectures.

Sir John Soane: The Royal Academy Lectures contains the full text of Soane's letters, carefully edited by David Watkin. It is a revised and abridged edition of his award-winning book Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures. In his introduction to this new volume, Watkin explains the significance of Soane's approach to architectural history and theory, as expressed in the lectures delivered from 1810-1820 as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. They are accompanied by a selection of the watercolors that Soane prepared as illustrations.

Sir John Soane: The Royal Academy Lectures contains the full text of Soane's letters, carefully edited by David Watkin. It is a revised and abridged edition of his award-winning book Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures. In his introduction to this new volume, Watkin explains the significance of Soane's approach to architectural history and theory, as expressed in the lectures delivered from 1810-1820 as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. They are accompanied by a selection of the watercolors that Soane prepared as illustrations.

Sir John Soane: The Royal Academy Lectures contains the full text of Soane's lectures, edited by David Watkin from the manuscripts at the Sir John Soane's Museum in London. It is a revised and abridged edition of his award-winning book Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thought and the Royal Academy Lectures. In his introduction to this volume, Watkin explains the significance of Soane's approach to architectural history and theory, as expressed in the lectures delivered from 1810-1820 as Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. Providing a key that enables the modern observer to understand the work of an architect who is widely regarded as the most inventive of his day, the lectures enable us to enter in Soane's private dialogue with an astonishing array of philosophers, architectural theorists, art historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists. They are accompanied by a selection of the beautiful watercolors that Soane prepared as illustrations.

This book of essays, ‘The cloud-capped towers:’ Shakespeare in Soane’s Architectural Imagination, is published to coincide with an exhibition with the same title to be shown at Sir John Soane’s Museum (21 April to 21 October 2016) as part of the nationwide commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the death of the great English playwright William Shakespeare.Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was a highly literary architect, who appears to have valued Shakespeare for the architectural pictures he conjured up, and also as a moral teacher. He had a deep knowledge of Shakespeare’s work, quoting (and misquoting) it often, notably in his Royal Academy lectures. His fascination with Shakespeare is evident both in his library and in the Shakespearian references throughout his house-museum, the most obvious being the Shakespeare Recess, a shrine to the bard on the staircase.The four essays in this volume look at the influence of Shakespeare on Soane’s architecture, against the wider background of the eighteenth-century Shakespearean revival; at Soane as a ‘bardolator’ and bibliophile and at contemporary performance and theatre-going, with a particular focus on the plays seen by Soane and his wife Eliza.The essays are illustrated by a number of illustrations in full colour, the majority drawn from Soane’s own collection -- Back cover.

"First published on the occasion of the exhibition ... Royal Academy of Arts, London, 11 September-3 December 1999"--Title page verso.