By examining the connections between literature and architecture in the work of writers and by viewing architecture in literary terms, Lee Morrissey traces a narrative of cultural change in the Augustan Age and beyond.
Each chapter establishes a connection with architecture in the careers of an author and then describes how a principal text - Paradise Lost, The Provok'd Wife, An Essay on Man, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, and The Castle of Otranto - focuses the literary and historical issues of the period in architectural terms.