Preface. Walpole moves from Strawberry Hill to Connecticut -- Introduction. 'Things come to light' : experiment and experience : the philosophical and cultural context -- 'The pleasures of the imagination' : tropes of taste -- 'Giving an idea of the spirit of the times' : anecdotes and antiquarianism -- 'I am going to build a little Gothic castle at Strawberry Hill' : creation of a seat, part 1 -- 'The art of creating landscape' : creation of a seat, part 2 -- Epilogue. 'A genius is original, invents. Taste selects, perhaps copies with judgement'
Drawing together landscape, architecture and literature, Strawberry Hill, the celebrated eighteenth-century "Gothic" villa and garden beside the River Thames, is an autobiographical site, where we can read the story of its creator, Horace Walpole. This beautifully illustrated book reveals the Gothic villa and associated landscape to be inspired by theories that stiumlate. 'The Pleasure of the Imagiation' articulated in the series of essays by Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719) published in the Spectator (1712). Linked to this argument, it proposes that the concepts behind the designs for Strawberry Hill are nto based around architectural precedent but around eighteenth-century aesthetics theories, antiquarianism and matters of "Taste."
