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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
‘Within the last fifteen or twenty years, a larger field has been opened for architectural talent, than at almost any period in our modern annals; a greater number of bridges and churches, and of both public and private works, upon an extended scale, have been completed, than in a hundred years before. [However] the taste and style of some of the public edifices do not indicate such a state of improvement as might have been desired and expected from the increased opportunities which have been thus afforded.’
The above statement well expresses the general dissatisfaction with contemporary public architecture so prevalent in the periodical criticism of the late 1820s and 30s: a feeling so widespread that Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine of 1828 referred to it half-seriously as a ‘fashion’. It was a relatively recent phenomenon. In the previous decade a strong mood of optimism characterized prospective thinking about metropolitan architecture. The renewal of extensive government patronage of architecture after the Napoleonic wars, together with the profusion of privately financed major works being erected or planned, led contemporaries to envision and hope for a favourable transformation of the topography and architectural image of London.
With the exception of the Athenaeum of 1828 and 1829, all issues of a given journal for any given year are bound in a single volume and pages are numbered consecutively through the entire volume.
1 ‘Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Office of Works and Public Buildings’ in Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine [hereinafter CNM] (1828), p.396.
2 CNM (1828), p. 301. ‘Fashion’ was a stronger word then, being practically equivalent of mindless cant. See Westminster Review [WR] (1827), p.42 Google ScholarPubMed. On the dissatisfaction, see Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830 (1969 edn) p.307.Google Scholar
3 See Summerson, J., Georgian London (1962 edn), pp. 177–190, 200–201. ch.15–17Google Scholar; Architecture in Britain pp.305, et seq.
4 CNM (1817), p.342.
5 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine [BEM] (1819), pp. 139–140.Google Scholar
6 European Magazine [EM] (1812), p.381.Google ScholarPubMed
7 ibid. See also CNM (1817), p.341, and Pamphleteer (1814), p.342.
8 See, e.g., The Architectural Magazine [Loudon’s] (1835), p. 196 Google Scholar, and Literary Gazzette [LG] (1839), p.684.Google Scholar
9 See The Spectator [Spec] (1832), pp.568 et seq.Google ScholarPubMed; (1839), pp.1022 et seq.; Loudon’s(1835), pp.180 et seq.Google Scholar; The Athenaeum [Ath] (1835), pp.226 et seq.Google Scholar; (1836), pp.358 et seq., 467 et seq.; LG (1835), pp.603 et seq.; WR (1836), p.424; Quarterly Review [QR] (1837), pp.65, 79.Google ScholarPubMed
10 See CNM (1828), pp.396 et seq.
11 See Spec. (1837), pp.90 et seq., 426 et seq., 498 et seq., 595 et seq.Google ScholarPubMed; LG (1834) p. 284.
12 See LG (1821), pp.689 et seq.; (1833), pp.634 et seq., 649 et seq.; Spec. (1837) pp.90 et seq., 426 et seq., 498 et seq.; Jenkins, F. I., Architect and Patron (1958) pp. 161–177.Google Scholar
13 See Loudon’s (1834), pp.12 Google Scholar et seq.; (1835), pp.373 et seq., 470 et seq.; Jenkins, F.I., op. cit., pp.91–119.Google Scholar
14 See, e.g., QR (1837), p.78; Spec. (1836), p.300; (1839), pp. 1022 et seq.; Loudon’s(1834), pp.324 et seq.
15 See Foreign Quarterly Review [FQR] (1834), p.56.Google Scholar
16 See Fraser’s Magazine [FM] (1830), p.73.Google Scholar
17 See Bray, J. W., A History of English Critical Terms (1898), pp. 160–166.Google Scholar
18 FM (1837), p. 336.
19 QR (1835), p. 368. ‘Invention’, strictly speaking, refers to a process of mind the imaginative and unimitative working of the creative material, the creati of new formal elements. (See Bray, J. W., op. cit., p. 173 Google Scholar). However, in t criticism, it is usually indistinguishable from ‘originality’.
20 BEM (1830), p. 17.
21 BEM (1830), p. 17. ‘Genius’ as a quality of mind and of art was often equated with ‘originality’. See Bray, J. W., op. cit., p. 125 Google Scholar, and Bate, W. J., Criticism: ‘.Major Texts (1952), p. 328.Google Scholar
22 BEM (1830), p. 17.
23 ibid.
24 FM (1830), p. 72.
25 ibid. See also Loudon’s (1834), p.327 Google Scholar, and Ath. (1836), p. 363.
26 BEM (1819), pp. 143–144.
27 FM (1830), p. 69.
28 ibid.
29 ibid.
30 ’… originality denotes that which is new and more or less unexpected, but which is at the same time an organic development of that which is already well known and familiar.’ Bray, J. M., op. cit., pp. 211–212.Google Scholar
31 BEM (1820), p. 370.
32 The phrase, as well as the most perceptive exposition of the problem, belongs to W. J. Bate. See his Burden of the Past and the English Poet (1970).
33 Collins, P., Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750–1950 (1965), pp.67 et seq., 118 et seq.Google Scholar
34 Trotman, E., ‘On the Alleged Degeneracy of Modern Architecture’, Loudon’s (1834), p. 148.Google Scholar
35 FQR (1830), p. 72.
36 Wightwick, George, Loudon’s (1835), p. 344 Google Scholar. See also FM (1830), p. 72.
37 See also BEM (1819), p. 143; Loudon’s (1834), pp. 187–188 Google Scholar; CNM (1818), p. 113.
38 Ath. (I of 1829), p. 392. See also Bate, , The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, pp.48–50 Google Scholar; Hazlitt, William, ‘The Periodical Press’, Edinburgh Review [ER] (1823), pp. 356–357.Google Scholar
39 Loudon’s (1834), p. 188.Google Scholar
40 CNM (1818), p. 101. See also BEM (1820), p. 663.
41 Loudon’s (1834), p. 52.
42 WR (1827), p. 65.
43 QR (1835), p. 368.
44 FM (1837), p. 335.
45 FM (1831), p. 279.
46 FQR (1834), p. 96.
47 Specific references to architects and/or buildings are deplorably lacking in all of this criticism. However, Fraser’s (1831), p. 287, criticized Dance for ’sticking up the [Ionic] porch against the house [his College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields] in such a manner that its entablature, if carried on, would cut through the upper windows’. Nash ‘up-piles structure upon structure, dome upon dome in a more poetical than intelligible manner’ (FM, 1831, p. 286). ‘Smirke … give[s] us the form of the antique … without feeling, without finish, without character [i.e. consistency of expression - see Loudon’s (1834), pp.323 et seq.]’ possibly referring to his College of Physicians, Trafalgar Square (FM, 1831, p. 279).
48 Loudon’s (1834), p.51.Google Scholar
49 WR (1836), p. 420.
50 CNM (1818), p. 101.
51 CNM (1818), p. 296. He is presumably referring to Smirke’s 1809 version of the theatre and to Philip Hardwick’s Christ Church, Marlebone (see Summerson, J., Georgian London, pp.225, 254Google Scholar). For Greek Revivalists and their ideas of design see Mordaunt Crook, J., The Greek Revival: Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture, 1760–1870 (1972), pp.80 et seq.Google Scholar
52 FM (1831), p. 290.
53 CNM (1821), p.50. Fraser’s (1831), p.291, uses the analogy of needlework done with pre-dawn patterns.
54 CNM (1821), p. 501.
55 Loudon’s (1835), pp. 195–196. See also FQR (1834), p. 103; Loudon’s (1834), pp. 4–5; CNM (1821), pp.501 et seq.; Examiner [Ex.] (1808), p.780.
56 CNM (1821), p. 501.
57 LG (1825), p. 493.
58 FQR (1834), p. 96.
59 Coleridge, S. T., from Bray, op. tit., p.212.Google Scholar
60 QR (1835), p.368. See also FQR (1834), pp.92 et seq.; Loudon’s (1834), pp.49 et seq.; WR (1827), p.66; FM (1830), pp.63 et seq.; BEM (1820), pp.370 et seq.
61 See QR (1835), pp.338 et seq.
62 See QR (1837), pp. 66-68.
63 See BEM (1820), pp.370 et seq.
64 FQR (1834), p. 105. See also FM (1830), p.69; (1837), pp.328, 337.
65 See QR (1835), p.371.
66 Summerson, speaking of the mid-Victorian period, says that ‘ “style” … meant, in effect, a sum of details. The plan was something else … The “art“ was in the ornaments’. ( Summerson, J., Victorian Architecture: Four Studies in Evaluation, 1970, p. 86 Google Scholar). The introduction of Loudon’s 1834 volume notes that ’Architecture, as a fine art, consists chiefly in the combination of forms’ (Loudon’s, 1834, p. 5). The means of combination, the principles of ensemble were very much a part of the notion of style, especially to contemporaries who looked upon theirs as a fragmented architecture: ‘Notwithstanding … that minute attention is paid to details - the scrupulous exactness with which a moulding, or a base of a column is copied from some ancient example - there is very little study exhibited; otherwise, we should not meet with… such evident want of unity in the ensemble, - as to convince us that the architect does not understand the style he professes to follow’ (FM, 1830, p.73).
67 See, e.g., EM (1792), p.365; CNM (1816), pp.119 et seq.; (1817), pp.341 et seq. It is interesting to note how frequently these writers used the device of seeing London and its public buildings through the eyes of a hypothetical foreign traveller, indicating the importance to contemporaries of how well a civic building embellished the urban topography.
68 FM (1830), p.77, EM (1812), pp.264 et seq., and WR (1835), p. 163 are the sole exceptions.
69 Summerson, , Victorian Architecture: Four Studies in Evaluation, p. 116 Google Scholar. See also Collins, P., op. cit., p. 126.Google Scholar
70 ’Invention’, probably in the stricter sense of the word. See note 19 above.
71 Ath. (1831), p.650. See also on Soane Ath. (I of 1828), pp.75 et seq.; (II of 1828), pp.379 et seq.; (1837), p.32; FM (1837), pp.337–339; Loudon’s (1834), pp.310 et seq.; (1835), p.247.
72 See Summerson, , Georgian London, pp. 205–206.Google Scholar
73 See Hope, Thomas, An Historical Essay on Architecture (1835)Google Scholar; Collins, , op. cit., pp. 118–119 Google Scholar. Also relevant is Lang, S., ‘Richard Payne Knight and the Ideal of Modernity’ in Summerson, J., Concerning Architecture (1968), pp. 85–97.Google Scholar
74 See Loudon’s (1834), pp.324 et seq., ‘On Character in Architecture’.
75 Bate, , The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, p. 104.Google Scholar
76 ibid., pp. 100–101.
77 ibid., p. 101.
78 Emerson, Ralph Waldo in Bate, op. cit. p. 97.Google Scholar
79 The extent to which architects themselves felt the demands of originality, either from criticism or as a malady possibly common to all the arts of the period, is not strictly relevant in explaining the basis for critical dissatisfaction. Noteworthy, though, is Trotman’s defensive apology for contemporary architecture in Loudon’s (E. Trotman, ‘On the Alleged Degeneracy of Modern Architecture’, Loudon’s, 1834, pp.149 et seq.) and the fact that Soane, in his first Royal Academy lecture (1809), charged his students to ‘become Artists, not mere Copyists’ ( Soane, John, Lectures on Architecture, ed. Bolton, A. T., 1929, p.76 Google Scholar). See also Collins, P., op. cit., pp.67 et seq., 96, 118 et seq.Google Scholar
80 Loudon’s (1835), p. 382. See also James Savage, ‘Observations on Style in Architecture’, WR (1836), pp. 420–421.
81 See K. Clark, The Gothic Revival (1964 edn), which relied heavily on the Gentle man’s Magazine; or Eastlake, C. L., A History of the Gothic Revival, ed. Mordaunt Crook, J. (Leicester 1970)Google Scholar.
82 Clark, op. cit., p. 60. Clark understates the coverage given to the subject, as any perusal through a volume of the magazine, especially after 1815, will point out.
83 Summerson, , Architecture in Britain p. 320.Google Scholar
84 Summerson, , Georgian London, p. 201.Google Scholar
85 Hitchcock, H.-R., Early Victorian Architecture I (1954), p. 17.Google Scholar
86 Quarterly Review (1809-), Edinburgh Review (1802-), Westminster Review (1809-) and Foreign Quarterly Review (1827–46) are the reviews used in this study.
87 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1802-), Fraser’s Magazine (1830-), The Athenaeum(1828-), Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine (1814-), The Spectator (1828-), Examiner (1808-), European Magazine (1782–1825), Literary Gazette (1817-) and The Architectural Magazine (1834–39) are the magazines used. (These thirteen were selected out of the four dozen or so British periodicals published during the period 1790–1840 which are available in the Harvard College libraries.)
88 See Graham, W., English Literary Periodicals (1966).Google Scholar
89 The Edinburgh Review carried four articles which can be considered to be totally or primarily about architecture from 1802 to 1839. This is slightly less than a representative frequency for the reviews whose articles’ average length was 10000 words. The magazines produced a greater number of articles per year, but only because magazines appeared weekly or monthly. Fraser’s, a monthly, featured eight articles, each averaging 4000–5000 words in length between 1830 and 1840. The Literary Gazette, a weekly in tabloid form with type smaller than that of the New York Times, contained forty-five critical articles, averaging two to three columns in length, between 1817 and 1840.
90 See Copinger, W. A., On the Authorship of the First Hundred Numbers of the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (1895).Google Scholar
91 See H., & Shine, H. C., The Quarterly Review Under Gifford … 1809–1824 (1949).Google Scholar
92 See Nesbitt, G. L., Benthamite Reviewing (1934).Google Scholar
93 See Thrall, M. M. H., Rebellious Fraser’s (1934), pp.8, 276–294.Google Scholar
94 See Marchand, L., The Athenaeum (1941), p. 11 Google Scholar, and Francis, J. C., fohn Francis: Publisher of the Athenaeum (1888), p. 52.Google Scholar
95 See Hayden, J. O., The Romantic Reviewers, 1802–1824 (1969), pp. 11–12 Google Scholar, for a ‘ discussion of the reasons for anonymity. Most of the authors of articles on literary and political subjects have been identified. Almost no work has been done in identifying the writers on architecture. The five that are known from this period are J. C. Loudon who wrote for his magazine under the pseudonym ‘The Conductor’ W. H. Leeds, later editor of the Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal, who was probably ‘Candidus’ in Loudon’s (see Bolton, A. T., Portrait of Sir John Soane, 1927, pp.502–503 Google Scholar); Francis Cohen, later Sir Francis Pelgrave, who wrote a valuable article for the Quarterly Review in 1822 (QR, 1822, p. 308) (see Shine & Shine, op. cit., p.79 Google ScholarPubMed); and Allan Cunningham and George Darley, who wrote for the Athenaeum but did not sign their respective articles (see Marchand, op. cit., p.57).
96 Marchand, , op. cit., p.57.Google Scholar
97 See Shine & Shine, op. cit., p. 105.Google ScholarPubMed
98 See Graham, , op. cit., pp. 253–254.Google Scholar
99 Loudon’s (1834), preface to the volume.
100 See, e.g., the discussion of Palladio in QR (1835), pp.366–367, and of Soane’s Council Office in Ath. (I of 1828), pp.75 et seq.
