Andrew Ballantyne's study of the prominent late-Georgian critic Richard Payne Knight is based on his writings on aesthetics and his influence on the principles of taste in the eighteenth century. Knight played an important role in the controversy about picturesque taste and its application to garden design, which became a major preoccupation during the second half of the century. Knight's ideas were given concrete expression in his writings and verses, of which his Analytic Inquiry into the Principles of Taste was the most influential.