The first book to foreground his architecture
Cover of E. W. Godwin, the seventh book in the Victorian Architects Series. Shows an elevation drawing by Godwin of the first design for a studio-house for Frank Miles, 1878 (detail). Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Given by Mr Edward Godwin, son of the artist.
The architect Edward William Godwin (1833–86) was a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement that began in the 1870s, influenced by Japanese design and a belief in art for art’s sake. He was the lover of the actress Ellen Terry and was friends with Oscar Wilde and the painter James McNeill Whistler. Such celebrity connections, combined with Godwin’s disdain for convention, have helped to frame previous discussion of his buildings, furniture and decorative design.
The former Council Chamber at Northampton Guildhall, now the Godwin Room, designed by E. W. Godwin in 1861 and restored in the early 1990s
Photo: Lucy Millson-Watkins
In this new book, the first on Godwin in more than 25 years, Aileen Reid argues that his early work as a Gothic Revivalist is far more significant than previously recognised. By looking at Godwin’s ideas through the prism of his architecture Reid overturns the notion of Northampton Town Hall as an immature preamble to the striking simplicity of his 1870s studio-houses in Chelsea, including the White House for his friend Whistler. Instead, she demonstrates the continuities in his career; that all his design work – buildings, journalism, furniture, textiles and theatre – was governed by a set of principles that, although they evolved radically in how they were expressed, remained remarkably consistent, and were informed to the end by his reading of John Ruskin.
Frank Miles’s House (1878) and The Tower House (1882) in Tite Street, Chelsea. Photo: Chris Redgrave
The book is illustrated by many newly taken photographs by a leading architectural photographer, as well as drawings in the tradition of the Survey of London.
Author Aileen Reid has been a historian on the Survey of London at UCL since 2005. This book is the result of working on and off on Godwin for 40 years.
The seventh book in the Society’s Victorian Architects series is published in partnership with Liverpool University Press and Historic England.
E. W. Godwin is available for purchase directly from the Victorian Society website.
Chelsea Lodge (demolished), the double house and studio in Tite Street, Chelsea, designed by Godwin in 1878-79 for Archibald Stuart-Wortley and the caricaturist Carlo Pellegrini (‘Ape’).
