Geoffrey Scott wrote one full-scale biography, as well as composing one work of architectural history and laying the foundations for the major edition of the private papers of James Boswell, the crucial biographical source for one of the greatest of all literary biographers. Scott's first substantial work, The Architecture of Humanism (1914), has been among the most influential books on architectural history in the twentieth century and remains a classic in the field. Finally, his The Portrait of Zélide (1925), a life of the Dutch bas-bleu (bluestocking) Isabel de Charrière, is regarded by some as the most exquisitely crafted life of a literary figure to be written in the immediate aftermath of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918). Scott was prevented by his death from embarking on a planned biography of Boswell, but he produced enough in his lifetime to warrant a lasting reputation.

Geoffrey Scott, born in...