ABSTRACT
The late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century picturesque is the focus of this
chapter. Its central figure is John Soane, notably his house, office and museum at
12-14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, which he transformed between 1792 and
1837. Drawing parallels between Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, William
Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, ‘A Life in Ruins’
discusses Soane’s architectural autobiography and the themes of dynasty and decay
that fuelled it. Concluding my investigation of Soane, Chapter 4 analyses his
fascination for the architectural potential of gardens, climate and weather.
