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Excerpt from Introduction to Regency Architecture This Short Essay does not pretend to be more than an elementary survey of Regency architecture. Its purpose is to draw attention, by way of generalization rather than close examination, to the highlights of a brief but beautiful period of English building. I hope that the lay reader will learn enough from the text and the plates to value this fast-vanishing beauty and to protest energetically when he sees an example of Regency architecture threatened with destruction. I must, of course, acknowledge my debt to Mr John Summerson for his Georgian London (Pleiades Books) and his life of John Nash, Architect to King George IV (George Allen and Unwin Ltd), both of which I re-read before starting this present essay. I should like to thank the Director and the Staff of the National Buildings Record for their courteous help in finding so many of the plates and also the Librarian of the Royal Institute of British Architects for lending for block-making copies of L. N. Cottingham's Ornamental Metal Worker's Directory, John Tallis's London Street Views and John Nash's The Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Finally, I should like to acknowledge my lasting gratitude to my father, without whose impelling enthusiasms I might never have enjoyed the pleasures of architectural appreciation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preser