A collection of Hunt's essays, many previously unpublished, dealing with the ways in which men and women have given meaning to gardens and landscapes, especially with the ways in which gardens have represented the world of nature "picturesquely".

In this fresh and authoritative account John Macarthur presents the eighteenth century idea of the picturesque – when it was a risky term concerned with a refined taste for everyday things, such as the hovels of the labouring poor – in the light of its reception and effects in modern culture. In a series of linked essays Macarthur shows: what the concept of picture does in the picturesque and how this relates to modern theories of the image how the distaste that might be felt today at the sentimentality of the picturesque was already at play in the eighteenth century how visual values such as ‘irregularity’ become the basis of modern architectural planning; how the concept of appropriating a view moves from landscape design into urban design why movement is fundamental to picturing the stillness of buildings, cities and landscapes. Drawing on examples from architecture, art and broader culture, John Macarthur's account of this key topic in cultural history, makes engaging reading for all those studying architecture, art history, cultural history or visual studies.

A previously unpublished work by Nikolaus Pevsner, much of which was published as journal articles in the Architectural Review in the 1940s and 1950s during Pevsner's term as editor.

The author traces the rise of the picturesque garden in England and throughout Europe, exploring intricate dialogues between practical place-making and the theoretical formulations of the picturesque. He surveys a wide range of sites - Rousham, Stourhead, Kew, Hestercombe, The Leasowes, Hafod, Ermenonville, Désert de Retz among others - and the contributions to their creation by both amateurs and professionals. The impact on European countries of the English example was complicated by the parallel rise of a picturesque garden in France, which had its own cultural direction even while it looked to England and China for inspiration. Finally, the book analyses and assesses the impact of English and French design upon other countries, in particular Sweden, the German-speaking lands and Russia.

The aesthetic mode of the picturesque has undergone so many transformations since its initial discussion in eighteenth-century England that it is hard to say just what it is. In these probing essays, Sidney K. Robinson re-examines the picturesque in its late eighteenth-century phase.

Essays on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ways of looking at landscape, in theory and practice.

Published in 1967: When first published forty years ago, this now well-known study was regarded as something of a pioneering venture in the field of visual romanticism. Despite susbsequent works on the various aspects of this subject, The Picturesque has always remained the most informative and illuminating historical introduction to the study of visual values as reflected in English literature, painting and lanscaping at the turn of the eighteeth and nineteenth centuries.