Monthly Spotlight

January 2007

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner

We start off our 2007 spotlights by considering one of the greatest art historians of the twentieth century - Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, who was born in Leipzig in 1902. He read art history at several German Universities, gaining his PhD in 1924. He became interested in British art and architecture whilst teaching at Gottingen University and he chose to move to London when he fled the Nazi regime in 1935. At the age of nineteen, he converted from Judaism to Evangelical Luteranism.

In 1936 Pevsner published his first British Book Pioneers of the Modern Design. He went on to write An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England (1937). In the 1940s, he also edited the Architectural Review and King Penguin Books.

Once in England, Pevsner discovered that there were very few books about architecture in particular regions of the country. He decided to write a series of county guides to rectify this, and gained the support of the publisher Penguin. He began working in the series in 1945, spending his holidays travelling around the country to make observations and carry out research. The first volume. The first volume was published in 1951. There are forty-six books in the series, of which thirty-two written solely by Pevsner.

Each book contains detail on the architectural history and styles of the area as well as accounts of individual buildings, considering houses, churches and public buildings. The books also contain several photographs. The original volumes are gradually being replaced with new up-to-date editions in a larger format.

It was not just architecture that interested Pevsner; he also edited the Pelican History of Art series, published from 1953 onwards.

Pevsner was a well renowned academic and held several highly regarded teaching posts whilst in Britain. He was a great conservationist; in 1958 he became a founding member of The Victorian Society, a charity formed to protect and study Victorian and Edwardian architecture. He died in London, in August 1983.

Pevsner Books

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