Roloff Beny Interprets in Photographs "Pleasure of Ruins" by Rose Macaulay

by Rose Macaulay, Roloff Beny (Photographer), Constance Babington Smith (Editor)

English novelist and writer Macaulay (1881 - 1958) chronicles the World War II blitz of London, affected cities and the remains of antiquity that stood prior to the war, to reflect on the historical, aesthetic, moral and emotional value of ruins. To accompany Canadian artist, photographer Roloff Beny Roloff Beny the visual hues, textures and breadth of ruins synchronously with Macaulay's narrative. The an impacting and emotional memorial of written and visual first-hand narrative of the Second World War.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Art, Archaeology

240 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1977

About the author

Emilie Rose Macaulay, whom Elizabeth Bowen called "one of the few writers of whom it may be said, she adorns our century," was born at Rugby, where her father was an assistant master. Descended on both sides from a long line of clerical ancestors, she felt Anglicanism was in her blood. Much of her childhood was spent in Varazze, near Genoa, and memories of Italy fill the early novels. The family returned to England in 1894 and settled in Oxford. She read history at Somerville, and on coming down lived with her family first in Wales, then near Cambridge, where her father had been appointed a lecturer in English. There she began a writing career which was to span fifty years with the publication of her first novel, Abbots Verney, in 1906. When her sixth novel, The Lee Shore (1912), won a literary prize, a gift from her uncle allowed her to rent a tiny flat in London, and she plunged happily into London literary life.

From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book, and if you come across a copy in good condition you should grab it. Beny is a long-deceased Canadian photographer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roloff_... and this is his masterwork, I think. I love it. I plan to reread it and write a real review sometime soon (maybe). I've had my copy for twenty years or more and reread it often.

Here's an extended sample of the book:
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuillet...
And another sampler:
http://youhavebeenheresometime.blogsp...

Really, you NEED this book. Trust me.

[Wastrel]

GR's blurb says this is a copy of a work published prior to 1923; it isn't.

GR's publishing details say it was published in 1977; it was. However, it was not first published in 1977, as GR claims; instead, the publishing info in the book says that it was first published in 1964. Constance Babington Smith selected the text extracts from Macaulay's book (published 1953), while Beny provided the illustrative photographs.

(it was printed (barring the colour pages, which had to be imported from the Netherlands) by a company based in the town of Over Wallop; this is of no great importance to anybody, I should imagine, but it doesn't feel right to let a perfectly good opportunity to say 'Over Wallop' go by unseized...)

[William Razavi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had enjoyed Roloff Beny's photos of Iran (in another quite dated book) and so I was happy to find this coffee table book at a library book sale and thought I'd give it a chance. After all, I am a fan of ruins.
I knew nothing about Rose Macaulay's book which is excerpted in this volume. I thought it might be really cool. It was certainly a cool premise, this idea that people take pleasure in ruins.
I can assure you, there's nothing in here that would make me want to read the unabridged version of Macaulay's book. I read old dated material all the time and I like to take what I can away from such things even as a negative lesson. But Macaulay is awful. Her text is like a bowl of soup that a cat threw up in. Whatever good was in there got ruined by the cat's rejected breakfast. In this case, it's not just that Macaulay has the prejudices of a different time and place--it's the specific prejudices really do ruin any point that might have been useful.
What Macaulay says (over and over) is that various people (Arabs, Indians, modern Mayans, etc) are unimaginative and lazy. Not only are they too lazy to build things that resemble the great monuments of the past (or repair the things) but they are also too unimaginative to appreciate the ruins either. But mostly, they are incapable of building anything like the things around them which are ruined.
This is a hefty coffee table book so hurling it across the room was not in the cards. But as I was reading my copy's binding (which was already a little loose) eventually tore right off. I could feel it ripping as I read. At first I did what I could to prevent further damage, but the deeper into Macaulay's awful opinions I got (and even Beny's captions for the photos reflected some similar world-views) the less I cared about what might happen to the binding.
In a case of form following function my copy of Pleasure of Ruins is itself something of a ruin.
I like it better that way. Something about that feels right. Like the kind of attitudes lovingly reproduced and illustrated here deserved to be ruined so they could be looked at in the light of their decay.
Beny's captions were in fact often as awful as Macaulay's writing, but at least his pictures are good.
The color plates are old school color plates pasted onto the page (they're all there--holding on to the paper like an inscription on a rock cut tomb). So, the only reason I allowed 2 stars here was for the pictures and the proliferation of plans of various sites from Persepolis to Krak des Chevaliers.
I'll hang on to this ruin, but if the text eventually drops off the page leaving a faded page I won't be upset if a scribe scrapes the old words away and makes a real palimpsest of this tome. It would be the most appropriate thing ever.

[Paul C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with others - the photographer Roloff Bany is the star of this combination of authors and this is perhaps his most satisfying work.

Rose Macaulay's book 'Pleasure of Ruins', is good - it takes you on a tour of global ruins from
Mycenae, Knossos, Palmyra, Baalbek, Petra, Carthage - to Xanadu, Goa, Delhi, Angkor-Wat, the great ruined cities of Ceylon and Spanish America and even Britain - with Silchester, Tintern, Malmesbury, Godstow, Cashel, Glendaloch, and Battle Abbey. She is a great crafter of the written word - using a vast and rich vocabulary.

But such a book cried out for illustrations - and Roloff Bany has published great photographs already on many of those places with an artistic eye in sympathy with the beauty of ruins. The combination of the 2 is therefore far greater than the simple sum of their parts and shows why books are still treasures even in the internet world of today. This edition was ceated after Rose Macaulay's death and contains an condensed version of the text - with lots of images.

Sadly - this large format book is now seen as a "collectors item" with prices to match - so try to find this in your library and enjoy the experience!

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have the IBS edition