Nikolaus Pevsner

Nikolaus Pevsner (January 30, 1902 - August 18, 1983) was a German-born British historian of art and, especially, architecture.

The son of a Jewish merchant, Pevsner was born in Leipzig, Saxony. He studied art history at the Universities of Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt/Main in Germany (PhD 1924), worked at the Dresden Gallery (1924-28) and taught at Göttingen University (1929–33). In 1934, he moved to England to escape Nazism and taught at London, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities.

He is best known for his 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, The Buildings of England (1951–74), one of the great achievements of 20th-century art scholarship.

Pevsner conceived and edited the Pelican History of Art series (1953– ), many individual volumes of which are regarded as classics.

He died in London.

Selected bibliography

• Academies of Art, Past and Present (1940)
• An Outline of European Architecture (1943)
• Pioneers of Modern Design (1949; originally published in 1936 under the title Pioneers of the Modern Movement)
• The Buildings of England (1951-74)
• The Englishness of English Art (1956)
• The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design (1968)
• A History of Building Types (1976)

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