Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England and Some Remarks Relative to Ecclesiastical Architecture and Decoration by Augustus Welby Pugin

Pugin (1812-1852) exercised a seminal influence on British archtecture in the nineteenth century, perhaps even more through his writings than his buildings. These facsimile articles, contain important autobiographical notes and commentary on his own architecture, not found elsewhere in his major texts. In the Present State.. (first issued as two articles in 1841-2) he gives us some minutely detailed accounts with ilustrations of his churches up to the year 1842. But his most revealing autobiographical writing is to be found in Some Remarks, published in 1850, and reprinted here for the first time. It takes the story almost to the end of his life, includes an account of his conversion to Catholicism (1835) and describes many of the churches he built between 1838 and 1850, giving a fascinating account of his campaign to revive the glories of the pre-Reformation English Catholic Church in the nineteenth century. Introduction by noted Pugin authority, Dr Roderick O'Donnell.