1st Edition
Place-making for the Imagination: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill
By Marion Harney
Copyright 2013
328 Pages
by
Routledge
326 Pages
by
Routledge
326 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Drawing together landscape, architecture and literature, Strawberry Hill, the celebrated eighteenth-century ’Gothic’ villa and garden beside the River Thames, is an autobiographical site, where we can read the story of its creator, Horace Walpole. This 'man of taste' created private resonances, pleasure and entertainment - a collusion of the historic, the visual and the sensory. Above all, it... Read more
Introduction; 1: ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination'; 2: ‘Giving an idea of the spirit of the times'; 3: ‘I am going to build a little Gothic castle at Strawberry Hill'; 4: ‘The art of creating landscape'; Epilogue
Biography
Dr Marion Harney is Director of Studies, Conservation of Historic Gardens and Cultural Landscapes at theUniversity of Bath, UK.
Prize: Winner of J.B. Jackson book prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies, 2015 'Based on doctoral research, this well-illustrated book provides new analysis of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, encompassing his extraordinary mid-eighteenth century house, garden, and collection at Twickenham on London’s Thames River. Harney takes as her thesis the idea that Walpole was influenced by ideas of association and imagination, especially as earlier articulated in Joseph Addison’s celebrated Spectator articles ’The Pleasures of the Imagination’ (1712). Rather than seeing Strawberry Hill as some grotesque Gothick precursor to later, more strident and archaeologically correct Gothic Revival, Harney argues for a reappraisal of Walpole’s ensemble as a carefully integrated and philosophically cogent epresentation of his aesthetic beliefs.' Australian Garden History '... Marion Harney has given us much to ponder, particularly in the field of architecture. She explores the complex relationship between neo-Palladian Houghton (Sir Robert’s house) and Strawberry Hill, and presents an unusually fullaccount of Walpole’s antiquarianism and his travels in search of Gothic. Most importantly, she encourages us to see Walpole’s projects as an imaginative whole.' Garden History 'The subject of this attractive, splendidly illustrated book is Strawberry Hill, the Twickenham country house Walpole transformed into a little Gothic castle to indulge his antiquarian tastes.' Times Literary Supplement
