Pugin (A.W.) Contrasts 1836 {1857} SLV [IB]

Pugin, Augustus Welby (1812-52; English)
Contrasts: Or, a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day, Shewing the Present Decay of Taste (London: Charles Dolman, 1836)
Purchased 1857
State Library of Victoria [RARESF 720.942 P96]

Pugin’s first significant publication was a powerful diatribe against the architectural and social tendencies of the day, as its title plainly indicates. It provided an influential model for like-minded successors such as William Morris.

The illustrations graphically spell out Pugin’s argument, developed further in his subsequent publications and Gothic Revival architecture (refer linked artist entry for further details).

[photo: Contrasted Residences for the Poor (from another copy)]

Refs.

MPL 1857, iii, p.28

The book has often been reprinted, sometimes together with Pugin’s True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) – apparently not an early MPL acquisition, although copies of it were purchased later: see e.g.Timothy Brittain-Catlin (intro.), Contrasts; and, The True principles of pointed or Christian architecture, Reading Spire Books, 2011 (held in the SLV)