John Soane – författare

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.

In 1812 the architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837) wrote a strange and perplexing manuscript, Crude Hints towards an History of my House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in which, in the guise of an Antiquary, he imagines his home as a future ruin, inspected by visitors speculating on its origins and function. Never published in his lifetime, the manuscript has been meticulously transcribed and provided with an explanatory Introduction and footnotes by Helen Dorey, Deputy Director and Inspectress of Sir John Soane’s Museum. Originally published as part of an exhibition catalogue sixteen years ago, this new edition has been extensively revised and updated. The text is accompanied by nineteen illustrations, seventeen of them in full colour.