Architecture

Architecture, drawn from the 1874 illustrated survey An Elementary History of Art, appears under the name N. D’Anvers, the pen name of Nancy Bell (1844-1933), a British art writer and translator who hid her gender behind initials and a French surname taken from Antwerp, her father’s birthplace. The parent survey ran through six trans-Atlantic editions by 1906, with Sampson Low publishing later British printings alongside Scribner’s in America, and the architecture chapters were also issued separately as An Elementary History of Architecture of All Countries. Bell surveys building styles from the ancient world to modern times for general readers, the audience that made her one of Britain’s first popular art historians. Reviewers of the day praised the learned “Mr. D’Anvers,” unaware a woman stood behind the name. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.