The books are compact and intended to meet the needs of both specialists and the general reader. Each contains an extensive introduction to the architectural history and styles of the area, followed by a town-by-townand in the case of larger settlements, street-by-streetaccount of individual buildings. These are often grouped under the heading "Perambulation", as Pevsner intended the books to be used as the reader was walking about the area. The guides offer both detailed coverage of the most notable buildings and notes on lesser-known and
vernacular buildings; all building types are covered but there is a particular emphasis on churches and public buildings. Each volume has a central section with several dozen pages of photographs, originally in black and white, though colour illustrations have featured in revised volumes published by
Yale University Press since 2003.
Boundaries The volumes originally used the boundaries of the
historic counties of England, which were current at the time of writing. They largely continue to use the historic boundaries, but have been partially updated to reflect changes in London, Birmingham and the
Black Country, and Cumbria. The volume on the historic county of
Middlesex, for example, has been superseded by three of the six volumes covering the
Greater London area, whereas
Tyne and Wear, which was established from parts of
County Durham and
Northumberland in 1974, is covered in the volumes about those two counties.
Volumes in print and their editions Since 1962, the guides have undergone a gradual programme of updating to reflect architectural-history scholarship and to include significant new buildings. Pevsner left virtually all the revisions to others, acting as supervisor only. He ultimately revised only two of his original editions alone:
London 1: The Cities of London and Westminster (1962) and
Cambridgeshire (1970). Both were later revised again by others. The programme of revision of first editions was completed in 2024 with publication of the second edition of
Staffordshire, replacing that published in 1974. Until 1953, all volumes were published in paperback only, after which both hardback and paperback versions were issued. The revision of
London: 1 in 1962 was the first volume to be issued in hardback alone, and no further paperbacks were issued after 1964. Until 1970 volumes bore a sequential BE reference number, with
Cornwall being BE1. The last volume to be so numbered was
Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean (BE41). Thereafter
ISBNs identify each volume. Beginning in 1983, a larger format was introduced, and all subsequent new editions have been issued in this format (while, pending revisions, pre-1983 volumes continued to be reprinted in the original, smaller format). All editions are now published by
Yale University Press. The list below is of the volumes that are currently in print; for superseded volumes,
see below. Where revisions were spread over more than one volume, the preceding edition remained in print until the whole area had been revised. } || || 2009 || ||
City Guides The first of the paperback City Guides, covering Manchester, appeared in 2001. It featured a new format with integrated colour illustrations. In most cases the City Guides have preceded a revision of the volume on the county in which they are located, although they go into greater detail than the county volumes and have more illustrations. The Bristol guide, for example, superseded part of
North Somerset and Bristol, which at that point was fifty years old, and provided material for
Somerset: North and Bristol, published three years later. Two of the guides, one covering Hull and the other Newcastle and Gateshead, remain the most recent volumes on their areas of coverage, as the corresponding county volume has not been revised since their publication. This series appears to be on a hiatus, with no new volumes published since 2010 and none confirmed as in planning. Two supplementary worksthus far the only of their typewere published in 1998, one covering London's City Churches and the other the Docklands area (see
London Docklands in
Superseded and unpublished volumes below). Both were issued in the format of the main series rather than the City Guides. However, unlike the Docklands edition which represented preliminary work for an expanded main volume, the City Churches volume augmented the text in
London 1: The City, published the previous year. The continued development of the Docklands area meant that the volume was superseded when
London 5: East was published seven years later, but the City Churches volume remains current and was reissued by Yale in 2002. •
London: The City Churches (1998) (Simon Bradley) ==
Buildings of Scotland==