The English Folly

The English Folly
Author: Gwyn Headley
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-06-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1800346727

If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously. Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.

Follies in America

Follies in America
Author: Kerry Dean Carso
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2021-08-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1501755943

Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.

Contemporary Follies

Contemporary Follies
Author: Keith Moskow
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1580933408

Contemporary Follies showcases outstanding examples of contemporary design that address our place in nature. Emerging from the Enlightenment spirit of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson, the English picturesque folly, and the forest retreats of Scandinavian modernists, these projects inspire contemplation and creativity in their spatial energy and alliance with the environment. The book features fifty structures, including work by internationally recognized firms such as Arata Isozaki & Associates, Heatherwick Studios, Patkau Architects, Steven Ehrlich Architects, TEN Arquitectos as well as innovative young studios in all parts of the world: Norway, United Kingdom, Austria, Chile, Germany, Ecuador, Finland, Taiwan, Spain, Canada, Netherlands, United States, Czech Republic, France, and Switzerland. International in scope and focused on design excellence, this collection of exquisite buildings will appeal to all who yearn for a place of their own, a retreat in which to regroup and reprioritize. Together these small structures are the contemporary interpretation of the folly, the small building nestled in the landscape, a place apart.

Follies, Grottoes & Garden Buildings

Follies, Grottoes & Garden Buildings
Author: Gwyn Headley
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Total Pages: 616
Release: 1999
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Chronicles nearly 1,450 UK sites which boast follies, grottoes or garden buildings of original or eccentric aspect.

The Praise of Folly

The Praise of Folly
Author: Desiderius Erasmus
Publisher:
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1913
Genre: Folly
ISBN:

Landscape of Dreams

Landscape of Dreams
Author: Isabel Bannerman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Gardens
ISBN: 9781910258606

Isabel and Julian Bannerman have been described as "mavericks in the grand manner, touched by genius" (Min Hogg, World of Interiors) and "the Bonnie and Clyde of garden design" (Ruth Guilding, The Bible of British Taste). Their approach to design, while rooted in history and the classical tradition, is fresh, eclectic and surprising. They designed the British 9/11 Memorial Garden in New York and have also designed gardens for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove and the Castle of Mey, Lord Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk at Arundel Castle in Sussex and John Paul Getty II at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire. The garden they made for themselves at Hanham Court near Bath was acclaimed by Gardens Illustrated as the top garden of 2009, ahead of Sissinghurst. When they moved from Hanham it was to the fairytale castle of Trematon overlooking Plymouth Sound, where they have created yet another magical garden. Landscape of Dreams celebrates the imaginative and practical process of designing, making and planting all of these gardens, and many more.

Folly

Folly
Author: Laurie R. King
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2002-05-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553381512

An acclaimed master of suspense creates a heroine you will never forget in this superbly chilling novel of a woman who begins a desperate undertaking that may transform her life--or end it. WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR WORST FEARS AREN’T ALL IN YOUR MIND? Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world. She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle; but as her life begins to rebuild itself along with the house, his story starts to wrap around hers. Powerful forces are stirring, but Rae cannot see where her reality leaves off and his fate begins. Fifty-two years old, Rae must battle the feelings that have long tormented her--panic, melancholy, and a skin-crawling sense of watchers behind the trees. Before she came here, she believed that most of the things she feared existed only in her mind. And who can say, as disturbing incidents multiply, if any of the watchers on Folly Island might be real? Is Rae paranoid, as her family and the police believe, or is the threat real? Is the island alive with promise--or with dangers? With Folly, award-winning author LAURIE R. KING once again powerfully redefines psychological suspense on a sophisticated and harrowing new level, and proves why legions of readers and reviewers have named her a master of the genre.

The March of Folly

The March of Folly
Author: Barbara W. Tuchman
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 530
Release: 1985-02-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0345308239

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government. Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display. Praise for The March of Folly “A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”—The New York Times Book Review “An admirable survey . . . I haven’t read a more relevant book in years.”—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe “A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Follies

Follies
Author: Gwyn Headley
Publisher: National Trust
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-07-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781907892301

Britain's countryside is liberally sprinkled with follies – eccentric, original buildings built for fun by landowners and aristocrats over the centuries. They include prospect towers, ornamental temples, rustic hermits' cottages, faux-prehistoric stone circles, and some buildings that don't seem to have had any purpose at all. In this fascinating and stylish book, folly expert Gwyn Headley brings together some of the most beautiful and intriguing follies cared for by the National Trust, from the craggy fake ruin at Mow Cop in Cheshire to the elegant buildings created by Henry Hoare for his great landscape garden at Stourhead. He also introduces some very extraordinary characters, such as Frederick Hervey, the 'Earl-Bishop', who had an obsession with women, volcanoes and rotundas, and Sir Thomas Tresham, whose fervent Catholicism inspired him to create the extraordinary Lyveden New Bield, an unfinished building suffused with religious symbolism. Fully illustrated with exquisite images of these remarkable buildings, this insightful book will inspire the folly-hunter in us all.