In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature [Paperback]

Christopher Woodward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2003

In this enchanting meditation on ruins, Christopher Woodward takes us on a thousand-year journey from the plains of Troy to the monuments of ancient Rome, from the crumbling palaces of Sicily, Cuba, and Zanzibar to the rubble of the London Blitz. With an exquisite sense of romantic melancholy, we encounter the teenage Byron in the moldering Newstead Abbey, Flaubert watching the buzzards on the pyramids, Henry James in the Colosseum, and Freud at Pompeii. We travel the Appian Way with Dickens and behold the Baths of Caracalla with Shelley. An exhilarating tour, at once elegant and stimulating, In Ruins casts an exalting spell as it explores the bewitching power of architectural remains and their persistent hold on the imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"If I am lonely in a foreign country," confesses Woodward, director of Britain's Holburne Museum of Art, " I search for ruins." Great houses and haunted ones, ruins of antiquity and of modern wars, suburban remnants and monastic shells form his terrain in this erudite, brisk and invigorating walk through lost domains. "Ruins do not speak," says Woodward, "we speak for them." In this compact but capacious book, Woodward brings forth the voices of architects, diarists, sculptors, eccentrics, archeologists, even a boxer. Woodward himself is present, sometimes traveling, sometimes reading, but never as an intrusive presence. Although Byron may have felt "the air of Greece" made him a poet, Woodward is certain that it was "the clammy mists of a ruined English abbey" and the effects are present in his own heightened, engaging prose, which often finds literary ghosts among the stones. From Virginia Water in Surrey, the largest artificial ruin in Britain, to Ninfa ("the loveliest lost city in Europe") and the real life inspirations for the abodes of Miss Havisham, the Ushers and Ozymandias, Woodward ventures to Ephesus (where St. Paul preached) and the magnificently over-designed John Soane's Museum, London (where he served as curator). The Roman Coliseum morphs from terrifying entertainment arena to cow pasture and stone quarry to major tourist attraction visited by, among the many, Hawthorne and Hardy. If "[a] ruin is a dialogue between an incomplete reality and the imagination of the spectator," this book listens in intently.-- ruin is a dialogue between an incomplete reality and the imagination of the spectator," this book listens in intently.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The ruins of majestic buildings, monuments, or colossal figures have long been objects of contemplation and sources of creative inspiration. They are reminders of the vulnerability of empire, the fragility of artistic endeavor, and the transience of human ambition. Woodward, director of the Holburne Museum of Art (Bath, England), visits the remains of the Roman Colosseum, deteriorated English abbeys and monasteries, neglected mansions of Cuban sugar barons, and the abandoned palaces of the Moorish princes of Sicily and the sultans of Zanzibar, charting the impact of such decay on the literature and art of the 16th to 20th centuries. As images, symbols, or motifs, they have informed the canvases of Piranesi and Constable, the poetry of Shelley ("Ozymandias") and Byron ("Childe Harold"), and the fiction of Poe ("Fall of the House of Usher"), to cite only some of Woodward's many representations. In this penetrating study Woodward also elaborates on the 19th-century European gentry's fancy for commissioning landscape architects to create contemplative false ruins, or "follies," amid their woodland estates. Recommended for all libraries.
Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (October 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400030862
• ISBN-13: 978-1400030866
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #546,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Spectacular Little Book, November 12, 2002

By 

John Barbey (San Francisco, California USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Ruins (Hardcover)

Here is the best description of the fascination of ruins that I have ever read. It is full of surprises and wonderful illustrations. There is nothing little about the spirit of this book - Woodward writes beautifully and has a perfect grasp of the sublime aesthetics of fine ruins. The reader is swept through a wide range of time, and of time periods, from antiquity to the present day. All throughout are marvelous, pithy descriptions - a super book !!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic for the Ages, November 2, 2002

By 

Curt DiCamillo (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Ruins (Hardcover)

The erudite Woodward has written an enormously entertaining and illuminating book whose rich, flowing prose is a pleasure to read. History is blended with the starkness of the modern world and transmitted to the reader redolent with imagery. Woodward's broad, firm grasp of history and effective weaving of desperate elements produces a satisfying read for those intrigued by the forgotten corners of the world and the mystery of the past. "In Ruins" is destined to become a classic. The residue of a romantic, misty past lingers long after the last page is turned.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Future travels will be experienced differently after reading this unusual book-, January 5, 2008

By 

Todd Nolan (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature (Paperback)

Harold Bloom writes that what makes some authors great to the point where their work approaches the canonical is "strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange." This meditation on ruins will surely withstand the test of time as well or better than some of the memorials of history that it describes. It has piqued my interest in something that I'd never given much thought to. I have been within walking distance of a couple of places the author writes about, and passed on the opportunity to visit them. Histories comprise more than half of my leisure reading, but somehow I couldn't muster the curiosity to explore a historical ruin in the same way I would with museums & historic landmarks (that are still in one piece). This wonderfully written book has changed that for me. Highly recommended, a book that you will likely want to re-read every few years, and take with you on visits to Rome, Sicily, Wales and more.