William Henry Leeds (1786–1866) was an English architectural critic and journalist.Macmillan encyclopedia of architecture, Vol. 2, 1982, p.654
Life Leeds was born in 1786 in Norfolk. He was credited by John George Cochrane and others as one of the anonymous translators of the anthology of German short stories Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (1823). Leeds was a frequent contributor to the Foreign Quarterly Review in the 1830s,Margaret Belcher, A.W.N. Pugin: an annotated critical bibliography, 1987, p.468 writing for them on Russian literature as well as architecture.Slavonic and East European review, vol. 40, 1963, p.209 In the 1840s he wrote for the Westminster Review.O. Boucher-Rivalain, 'William Henry Leeds (1786-1866), architectural critic, and his contribution to the Westminster Review in the 1840s ', Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, 55, pp.33-41 From 1839 to 1854 he edited the Civil Engineer's and Architect's Journal, and from 1855 to 1856 edited Land and Building News.S. A. Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, 1908, vol. 1
He translated Georg Moller's Memorials of German Gothic architecture and edited a revised edition of Decorative Part of Civil Architecture by William Chambers.
Works (transl.) Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations, London: W. Simpkin, R. Marshall and J. H. Bohte, 1823 (transl.) Moller's Memorials of German-Gothic Architecture; with additional notes and illustrations from Stirglitz, etc., London: John Weale, 1836 Illustrations of the public buildings of London: with descriptions of each edifice, 1838 'an essay on the present state of architectural study and the revival of the Italian style', published with Charles Barry's The Travellers' Club House (1839) Rudimentary architecture for the use of beginners and students. The orders, and their æsthetic principles, London, J. Weale, 1852 (ed.) Decorative Part of Civil Architecture by William Chambers, 1866
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