A taste for the romantic, fostered by the novels of Sir Walter Scott and a fondness for the medieval past, spurred the revival of Gothic designs during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As James Massey and Shirley Maxwell show in this fact-filled sampler, Gothic Revival caught the fancy of many Victorians who sought refuge in supposedly simpler days. Picturesque castles and cathedrals with spiky towers, high gabled roofs, and medieval ornament provided just the escape needed from the rigors of the industrial revolution. Gothic Revival recreates the age of Victoria by chronicling the era and its architecture, furnishings, fashions, art, literature, designers, and key buildings, all in an inviting format that brings back the style's heyday from the 1830s to the 1870s.
