Since its first publication in English in 1964 French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey from cellar to attic to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts memories and dreams. "A magical book. . . . The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye the glint of Gaston Bachelard." -from the new foreword by John R. Stilgoe