The first thing I did was set Alice’s brain to ‘Architecture Library’. Then, I searched for ‘villa design’ because my book by James Malton is a collection of design for rural retreats, such as villas. So, I figured that my search would give me something useful. Even though I got over 200 results, none of the suggested books were related to mine.
The whole title of my book is: “A Collection of Design for Rural Retreats, as Villas. Principally in the Gothic and Castle Styles of Architecture”. To get some decent results, I would have to deconstruct the title and do my next search which was ‘rural retreats’. This time I only got 14 results with no relations to my book. Searching with the words ‘gothic’ or ‘castle’ unfortunately didn’t bring the hoped results either.
I have hit quite the dead end, so I decided to change things up by setting Alice’s brain to ‘Xenotheka Library’. Once again, I started my search with ‘villa design’ and stumbled upon a book called “The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin – Late Republic to Late Antiquity” (published 2018) by Annalisa Marzano and Guy P.R. Métraux. This book is related to mine in the sense that it’s about villas. It shows different villas in a specific region mostly via text while Malton’s book has more illustrations. Nevertheless, this is my first match.Shortly after I found my second match. I simply searched for ‘villa style’ and found the book by Marie-Luise Gothein called “A History of Garden Art: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day” (published 1914). Judging by the title alone I was unsure if it was a fit. I didn’t look closely on the content of the book but on how it was portrayed. I noticed that there were a lot of pictures, just like in my book which help to understand the content even better.