This book of essays, Death and Memory: Soane and the Architecture of Legacy, is published to coincide with an exhibition of the same title at Sir John Soane's Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London (23 October 2015 - 26 March 2016) commemorating the 200th anniversary of Soane's beloved wife Eliza's death on 22 November 1815. Its relevance to Soane studies, is, however, much broader, with essays shedding new light on the architecture of legacy in Sir John Soane's Museum; Soane's preoccupation with memorialisation as revealed in the design process for the Soane family tomb; the legacy of his drawings collection and Soane's attempt shortly before his death to sustain future interest in his collections by creating a series of time capsules.

The essays, written by the curatorial team at Sir John Soane's Museum, are accompanied by thirty-nine illustrations in full colour, some of them published for the first time.