A.W.N. Pugin's life was divided between two obsessions: his design and his religion. The first he inherited from his father, an architectural draftsman; the second from life's hard experience, which led him to convert to Catholicism at age 22. The two obsessions combined in Pugin's moralistic approac

Decorative, Elegant, Gothic architecture, Grand, Political, Religious

At the mention of international intrigue and espionage, we naturally think of dashing secret agents who play roulette in Monacco while dressed in sparkling white dinner jackets. If the story involves a mad dictator, we expect his adversary to be a clever and precise dandy, whose smart lip can undo th

Ironic, Melancholy, Post-war literature, Power, Religious, Tragic

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was an exceptional seventeenth-century nun who set precedents for feminism long before the term or concept existed. Her "Respuesta" is a maverick work outlining the logical sense of women's education more than 200 years before Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." Her poetry, meanw

17th century literature, Feminist, Pioneering, Religious, Sublime

Many contemporary editions of St. Augustine's "Confessions" end with Chapter Ten on the grounds that what follows is uninteresting; uninteresting, publishers contend, because 'Confessions' is supposed to be juicy biography, not philosophy. The sins -- the thieving (in one scene, he even pilfers fruit

Classical & biblical literature, Contemplative, Elegant, Religious, Sincere