An engaging tribute to America's grand era of private estate gardens and their illustrious owners, this book sweeps across the country to present over 500 of the nation's most exquisite gardens and the people who built them. In addition to a wealth of horticultural details, we learn of the garden-maker's flamboyant private and public lives--of the gossip, parties, dreams, politics, and economic one-upmanship of the period. 280 illustrations, 130 in full color.
The relationship between England and its gardens might be described as a love affair; gardening is a national passion, rooted in history. The e18th century is often called the Golden Age of English gardening; as the fashion for formal pleasure grounds for the wealthy faded, a new era began, filled with picturesque vistas inspired by nature. Charting the transformation in English landscapes through the 18th and 19th centuries, The Golden Age of the Garden brings the voices of the past alive in newspaper reports, letters, diaries, books, essays and travelogues, offering contemporary gardening advice, principles of design, reflections on nature, landscape and plants, and a unique perspective on the origins of the English fascination with gardens. Exploring the different styles, techniques and innovations, and the creation of many of the stunning spaces that visitors still flock to see today, this is an evocative and rewarding collection for all gardeners and garden-lovers seeking insight, ideas and surprises.
The seventeenth century heralded a golden age of exploration, as intrepid travelers sailed around the world to gain firsthand knowledge of previously unknown continents. These explorers also collected the world’s most beautiful flora, and often their findings were recorded for posterity by talented professional artists. The Golden Age of Botanical Art tells the story of these exciting plant-hunting journeys and marries it with full-color reproductions of the stunning artwork they produced. Covering work through the nineteenth century, this lavishly illustrated book offers readers a look at 250 rare or unpublished images by some of the world’s most important botanical artists. Truly global in its scope, The Golden Age of Botanical Art features work by artists from Europe, China, and India, recording plants from places as disparate as Africa and South America. Martyn Rix has compiled the stories and art not only of well-known figures—such as Leonardo da Vinci and the artists of Empress Josephine Bonaparte—but also of those adventurous botanists and painters whose names and work have been forgotten. A celebration of both extraordinarily beautiful plant life and the globe-trotting men and women who found and recorded it, The Golden Age of Botanical Art will enchant gardeners and art lovers alike.
Covering the period from the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Winnie-the-Pooh, Humphrey Carpenter examines the lives and writings of Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, George Macdonald, Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne and others whose works make up the Golden Age of children's literature. Both a collective biography and a work of criticism, Secret Gardens forces us to reconsider childhood classics in a new light. ' Secret Gardens permits us to see in a fresh light the interaction between cultural history and literature, and to realize that ... it wasn't mere misfits who withdrew into the writing of children's books, but rather the sort of misfits who reflected the prevailing dissatisfactions of the age.' New York Times Book Review
The colourful, salacious and sumptuously illustrated story of Covent Garden - the creative heart of Georgian London - from Wolfson Prize-winning author Vic Gatrell SHORT-LISTED FOR THE HESSELL TILTMAN PRIZE 2014 In the teeming, disordered, and sexually charged square half-mile centred on London's Covent Garden something extraordinary evolved in the 18th century. It was the world's first creative 'Bohemia'. The nation's most significant artists, actors, poets, novelists, and dramatists lived here. From Soho and Leicester Square across Covent Garden's Piazza to Drury Lane, and down from Long Acre to the Strand, they rubbed shoulders with rakes, prostitutes, market people, craftsmen, and shopkeepers. It was an often brutal world full of criminality, poverty and feuds, but also of high spirits, and was as culturally creative as any other in history. Virtually everything that we associate with Georgian culture was produced here. Vic Gatrell's spectacular new book recreates this time and place by drawing on a vast range of sources, showing the deepening fascination with 'real life' that resulted in the work of artists like Hogarth, Blake, and Rowlandson, or in great literary works like The Beggar's Opera and Moll Flanders. The First Bohemians is illustrated by over two hundred extraordinary pictures, many rarely seen, for Gatrell celebrates above all one of the most fertile eras in Britain's artistic history. He writes about Joshua Reynolds and J. M. W. Turner as well as the forgotten figures who contributed to what was a true golden age: the men and women who briefly dazzled their contemporaries before being destroyed - or made - by this magical but also ferocious world. About the author: Vic Gatrell's last book, City of Laughter, won both the Wolfson Prize for History and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize; his The Hanging Tree won the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society. He is a Life Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge.
Longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2017 A moving story about transition between illness and recovery, childhood and maturity, life and death. Thirteen-year-old Frank Gold's family escaped from Hungary and the perils of WW2 to the safety of Australia, but not long after their arrival Frank is diagnosed with polio. Sent to a sprawling children's hospital called The Golden Age, he nds Elsa, the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, and a vocation for poetry. Frank and Elsa fall in love, fuelling one another's rehabilitation and facing the perils of polio and adolescence hand in hand. Meanwhile Frank and Elsa's parents must cope with their changing realities. Margaret, who has sacri ced everything to be a perfect mother, must reconcile her hopes and dreams with her daughter's illness. Frank's parents are isolated newcomers in a country they don't love. Ida, a renowned pianist in Hungary, refuses to allow the western deserts of Australia to become her home, while her husband Meyer slowly begins to free himself from the past and nd his place in the Perth of the early 1950s.
A medieval saga with political intrigue reminiscent of Game of Thrones, The Golden Age is an epic graphic novel duology from Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa about utopia and revolution. In the kingdom of Lantrevers, suffering is a way of life—unless you’re a member of the ruling class. Princess Tilda plans to change all that. As the rightful heir of late King Ronan, Tilda wants to deliver her people from famine and strife. But on the eve of her coronation, her younger brother, backed by a cabal of power-hungry lords, usurps her throne and casts her into exile. Now Tilda is on the run. With the help of her last remaining allies, Tankred and Bertil, she travels in secret through the hinterland of her kingdom. Wherever she goes, the common folk whisper of a legendary bygone era when all men lived freely. There are those who want to return to this golden age—at any cost. In the midst of revolution, how can Tilda reclaim her throne?
Following the epic cliffhanger in volume one, The Golden Age Book 2 concludes this exciting, medieval graphic novel duology. Tilda began her journey wanting to free her people from the iron fist of the ruling class—but she has lost her way. Obsessed with reclaiming her stolen throne, she forces her army to continue waging a futile war without pay or food. She has become what she hated: a heartless ruler. And the threat of rebellion begins to boil. To save Tilda from herself, Tankred forges a secret alliance with Hellier, the leader of the populous revolution. With their help, Tilda could win the war. But she’d have to give her power back to her people. Will Tilda realize the error of her ways and help her people be truly free? Or will the kingdom burn?
