Charles Locke Eastlake (1833-1906), an interior, furniture and industrial designer, showed talent as an architect and was awarded a Silver Medal in 1854 by the Royal Academy. He is known for influencing the style of later nineteenth-century 'Modern' Gothic furniture with his Hints on Household Taste (1868), but his passion for medieval architecture developed much earlier while he was in Europe during the 1850s. In 1866 he became Secretary to the Royal Institute of British Architects, and it was in 1872 that this work was published. The book is notable for being released at the height of the Gothic Revival movement in the later nineteenth century. It includes detailed comments on the architects, societies, literature and buildings that formed the cornerstones of the Gothic Revival, primarily in Britain, from around 1650 to 1870. A valuable mine of information, it remains a key source on the topic.