Editing Augustus Pugin (section)

===''Contrasts''===
In 1836, Pugin published ''Contrasts'', a polemical book which argued for the [[Gothic Revival|revival of the medieval Gothic style]], and also "a return to the faith and the social structures of the Middle Ages".<ref name="Guardian">{{cite news |last=Hill |first=Rosemary |date=24 February 2012 |title=Pugin, God's architect |newspaper=[[The Guardian]]  |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/24/pugin-gothic-architect |access-date=19 March 2012}}</ref> The book was prompted by the passage of the [[Church Building Act]]s of 1818 and 1824, the former of which is often called the '''Million Pound Act''' due to the appropriation amount by Parliament for the construction of new Anglican churches in Britain. The new churches constructed from these funds, many of them in a Gothic Revival style due to the assertion that it was the "cheapest" style to use, were often criticised by Pugin and many others for their shoddy design and workmanship and poor liturgical standards relative to an authentic Gothic structure.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Mary |editor-last=Mulvey-Roberts |year=1998 |title=The Handbook to Gothic Literature |place=Houndsmills and London, UK |publisher=Macmillan |page=94}}</ref>

Each plate in ''Contrasts'' selected a type of urban building and contrasted the 1830 example with its 15th-century equivalent. In one example, Pugin contrasted a medieval monastic foundation, where monks fed and clothed the needy, grew food in the gardens – and gave the dead a decent burial – with "a [[panopticon]] [[Workhouse#Early Victorian workhouses|workhouse]] where the poor were beaten, half-starved and sent off after death for dissection. Each structure was the built expression of a particular view of humanity: Christianity versus [[Utilitarianism]]."<ref name=Guardian/> Pugin's biographer, Rosemary Hill, wrote: "The drawings were all calculatedly unfair. [[King's College London]] was shown from an unflatteringly skewed angle, while [[Christ Church, Oxford]], was edited to avoid showing its famous [[Tom Tower]] because that was by [[Christopher Wren]] and so not medieval. But the cumulative rhetorical force was tremendous."<ref name=Guardian/>

In 1841 he published his illustrated ''The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture'', which was premised on his two fundamental principles of Christian architecture. He conceived of "Christian architecture" as synonymous with medieval, "Gothic", or "pointed", architecture. In the work, he also wrote that contemporary craftsmen seeking to emulate the style of medieval workmanship should reproduce its methods.