Reading houses and building books
Subtitle: Andrew Jackson Downing and the architecture of popular antebellum literature, 1835-1855
By: Adam W. Sweeting.
Publisher: University Press of New England
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Hanover
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
Subjects: Downing, A. J. 1815-1852 -- Influence.; American literature -- Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.) -- History and criticism.; Authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.); American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Popular literature -- United States -- History and criticism.; Books and reading -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Architecture and literature -- History -- 19th century.; Landscape architecture -- United States.; Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.) -- Intellectual life -- 19th century.; Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.) -- Intellectual life.
Description: Andrew Jackson Downing's reputation as architect, landscape designer, and author spread far beyond his native Hudson River Valley during the first half of the 19th century. But as Adam Sweeting suggests in this elegantly written, illustrated account, Downing's real legacy lies in the philosophical statement he created by melding the literary and building arts with an intensely moralistic outlook.

Along with such contemporaries as William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, and Frederick Law Olmsted, Downing pursued what Sweeting calls genteel romanticism, an ideal that viewed the confluence of polite literature and graceful dwellings as not just an aesthetic statement, but an ethical imperative.

This study of a unique coalescence of literature, architecture, and gardening illuminates "the widely held belief that efforts to reform the world began at home, that beautiful and clean houses produced morally beautiful and spiritually clean people."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-197) and index.