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There are many ways to show our devotion to an author besides reading his or her works. Graves make for popular pilgrimage sites, but far more popular are writers' house museums. What is it we hope to accomplish by trekking to the home of a dead author? We may go in search of the point of inspiration, eager to stand on the very spot where our favorite literary characters first came to life-and find ourselves instead in the house where the author himself was conceived, or where she drew her last...

For twenty years, at the end of the nineteenth century, a group of painters based in Glasgow, but working all over Scotland, and also on the Mediterranean coast and in the middle east, established an international reputation for realism, naturalism, and plein-air landscape painting. Led by James Guthrie, John Lowery, Arthur Melville and E.A. Hornel, they were to find fame and fortune with their naturalistic subject matter and their strong, clean, fresh colours. First published twenty years ago t...

From the late 1940s onward, Wallace W. Abbey masterfully combined journalistic and artistic vision to transform everyday transportation moments into magical photographs. Abbey, a photographer, journalist, historian, and railroad industry executive, helped people from many different backgrounds understand and appreciate what was taken for granted: a world of locomotives, passenger trains, big-city terminals, small-town depots, and railroaders. During his lifetime he witnessed and photographed swe...

In the era of celebrity culture, we are now more fascinated than ever with the lives of our leading artists. Creative personalities are always intriguing, and to learn something new about the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries – be they eccentric or sober, outspoken or reclusive – is compelling. Presented here are some of the most engaging life stories of our time, eventful, intimate and poignant. Lively short biographies, clearly grouped according to style and era, are illustrated...

The paintings and engravings of William Hogarth, the subject of this biography, have always been popular, but outside art history little is known about his life. He moved in the worlds of theatre, literature, journalism and politics, and found subjects for his work over the whole gamut of 18th-century London, from street scenes to drawing rooms, and from churches to gambling halls and prisons. Hogarth was made wealthy by his engravings for "The Harlot's Progress", but remained highly critical of...

Before there was Steve Jobs, there was Norman Bel Geddes.   A ninth-grade dropout who found himself at the center of the worlds of industry, advertising, theater, and even gaming, Bel Geddes designed everything from the first all-weather stadium, to Manhattan's most exclusive nightclub, to Futurama, the prescient 1939 exhibit that envisioned how America would look in the not-too-distant 60s.   In The Man Who Designed the Future, B. Alexandra Szerlip reveals precisely how central Bel Geddes...

Here, for the first time, is a panoramic overview of the most resonant work of the Pre-Raphaelite era in one handy volume. Combining well-known works with previously neglected materials, this ambitious anthology includes writing and art by such figures as the Rosettis, William Morris, John Ruskin, George Meredith, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Organized chronologically, the book enables the reader to trace the most prominent artists and writers within each decade, revealing how their influence...

I paint for myself. That's the only way. For when you paint to please it's not the honest thing & inhibits the chances of discovery, because there's no point in writing or painting unless you make your own discoveries.' Olivia Spencer Bower wrote those words near the end of an almost six-decade career as one of New Zealand's finest and best-loved artists. Born in England, she initially came to New Zealand reluctantly but learned to call this country home and to cherish its landscape, particularl...