British Architectural Theory, 1540-1750: An Anthology of Texts

Although it is often assumed that British writing on architectural theory really started in the 18th century, there is in fact a large corpus of writing on architecture pre-dating the introduction of Palladianism by Lord Burlington. Some of it, such as the English editions of Serlio and Palladio, belongs to the Vitruvian tradition. But many texts elude such easy classification, such as the prolonged (but hardly studied) discussions on church architecture, which are both in form and content very different from the way that theme was handled in Italian Renaissance treatises.