Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus

Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus (pĕvz`nər), 1902–83, English architectural historian, b. Germany. Influenced by Heinrich Wölfflin, Pevsner contended in his many works that art must be considered within its historical and social context. For many years Pevsner was art editor of Penguin Books. He was knighted in 1969. His major works include An Outline of European Architecture (1942), Pioneers of Modern Design (2d ed. 1949), Mannerism to Romanticism (2 vol., 1968), A History of Building Types (1976), and The Buildings of England, a massive 46-volume series of studies of regional English architecture (1951–74).

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Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus

(born Jan. 30, 1902, Leipzig, Ger.—died Aug. 18, 1983, London, Eng.) German-born British art historian. He studied at various German universities and taught at Göttingen University (1929–33) before moving to England to escape Nazism. There he taught at the Universities of London, Oxford, and Cambridge. He is best known for his writings on architecture, especially 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. He conceived and edited the Pelican History of Art series (1953– ); many of these individual volumes have become classics.