I purchased this book as a companion to another book that I enjoyed very much by Arnold Lewis called : "American Country Houses of the Gilded Age: Sheldon's "Artistic Country-Seats". I do not regret this purchase in the least, though I must say that I preferred Arnold Lewis' "AMERICAN COUNTRY HOUSES,etc" slightly more.
I give this book four stars for the following reasons:
(+) The plus points:
1) The size of this book is large (approximately 12 X 9 inches) and therefore the photos are also quite large and detailed.
2) The Introduction is marvelous, just as the Introduction to Lewis' other books are just as informative (eg: in "American Country Houses, etc").
As I recommended in my review to Lewis' other book called "American Country Houses of the Gilded Age: Sheldon's "Artistic Country-Seats", I would recommend reading the Introduction to this book before jumping-in and looking at all the photos first. The reason I say this is because the Introduction explains the backgrounds to the wealthy homeowners, and the Architects, and the builders, and more inmportantly, it gives an excellent background to the GILDED AGE, in general.
To better understand why the homeowners chose to decorate their lavish homes as such, a reader would need a background as to the Economic and Social trends important to the Gilded Age. I feel that Lewis' Introduction lays an excellent foundation to this book, & this nice Introduction will help the reader to better understand the photographs (12 X 9 inches).
3) The paper quality is excellent. The authors did not skimp on paper and binding, especially considering that this is a large paperback book.
(-) The minus point:
1) As even the authors stated, the 203 photos from THE ARTISTIC HOUSES, showed mostly the "public spaces" in each homes. Even though this book showed a few Victorian bedrooms, however, this book did not show photos of what would have been extremely valuable Victorian spaces, such as: the bathrooms, or the servants' quarters, or the kitchens.
I understand that Lewis was limited as to the photos he could show, since this book was focusing mainly on the 203 photos from ARTISTIC HOMES, however I so wished that there had been photos (ANY photos would do, if even from other sources) of the non-public spaces.
This point is the only minus I could find in this book, and therfore I gave this book 4 stars rather than five. However, if a reader has some supplemental books on Victorian interiors showing the non-public spaces, then those supplements can complete the picture, as they say, of what the lavish homes of the 1880's-1890's must have looked like.