Oft quoted but seldom credited,Charles Dudley Warner’s My Summer in a Garden is a classic of American garden writing and was a seminal early work in the then fledgling genre of American nature writing. Warner—prominent in his day as a writer and newspaper editor—was a dedicated amateur gardener who shared with Mark Twain, his close friend and neighbor, a sense of humor that remains deliciously fresh today. In monthly dispatches, Warner chronicles his travails in the garden, where he and his cat, Calvin, seek to ward off a stream of interlopers, from the neighbors’ huge-hoofed cows and thieving children, to the reviled, though “propagatious,” pusley weed. To read Warner is to join him on his rounds of his beloved vegetable patch, to feel the sun on his sore back, the hoe in his blistered hands, and yet, like him, never to lose sight of “the philosophical implications of contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growing things.” This Modern Library edition is published with an extensive new Introduction by Allan Gurganus, author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and The Practical Heart.
Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825-1916) was born in Scotland, the youngest daughter of a wealthy, land-owning family. She found an outlet for her lifelong love of nature and early interest in sketching and painting writing and illustrating books. Because, at the time, it was considered unladylike for women of her social status to have a career, she began with children's books, always signing her books and illustrations E.V.B. Her first book, Child's Play, was published in 1851, and she went on to become one of the most successful women illustrators of the Victorian era, contributing to works by some of the well-known authors at the time, as well as writing and illustrating her own books and articles. After her husband's retirement, the family moved to Huntercombe Manor in Buckinghamshire where she recreated the gardens. Days and Hours in a Garden (1884) is a collection of essays chronicling that garden through the year, with recollections of the changes that had been made to the grounds of the old manor house. Eleanor Vere Boyle wrote other gardening books in the later years of her long career, but Days and Hours in a Garden remains her most popular.
"Funny and beautiful - and I hate gardening" DAVID BADDIEL"An amazing book" ALISON STEADMAN"Honest and funny and so very timely" FAY RIPLEYWhen TV comedy writer Carl Gorham moved out of London to the country with his wife and young daughter in 2005, he swopped a small, terraced cottage with a thirty-foot garden for a large, detached house in Norfolk with three acres. An extraordinary fifteen years followed, a roller coaster ride of extraordinary highs and lows - bereavement, recovery, prosperity, unemployment, illness, triumph, struggle and happiness.My Life in a Garden describes that emotional, dramatic and comic period, a story told through the changing relationship between the author and his garden. How they were enemies, then friends. How he hated it, how he missed it. How he drew strength and support and understanding from it. How at times it seemed as if it was rebelling against him and trying to teach him something about his own stubbornness.My Life in a Garden is a book for the average, frustrated but dogged gardener; a story about the thousand and one small frustrations that confront an individual trying to master his environment; a tale to be enjoyed by anyone who has ever failed to conquer bind weed, or despaired at the manic growth of bamboo or wondered why all animals seem to do is just poo everywhere.It's a book for our times, when we are seeking more than ever to understand our place in the natural world and by extension, our relationship with the rest of humanity.
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS, -I did promise to write an Introduction to these charming papers but an Introduction, -what is it?-a sort of pilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, and usually flat, -very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid, which is, as I understand it, a cruel device of architecture, representing a man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or her head or shoulders a structure which they did not build, and which could stand just as well without as with them. But an Introduction is more apt to be a pillar, such as one may see in Baalbec, standing up in the air all alone, with nothing on it, and with nothing for it to do. But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that no formality, no assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignity to be sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only a footpath, leading the curious to a favorable point of observation, and then leaving them to wander as they will. Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers might better be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, and watches all day, but because he works unconsciously. He dare not even bring his work before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, as if too much knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacy and modesty of one's work
In her vivid and sly, gentle and wise, long-anticipated first collection, Delia Sherman takes seemingly insignificant moments in the lives of artists or sailors--the light out a window, the two strokes it takes to turn a small boat--and finds the ghosts haunting them, the magic surrounding them. Here are the lives that make up larger histories, here are tricksters and gardeners, faeries and musicians, all glittering and sparkling, finding beauty and hope and always unexpected, a touch of wild magic. Praise for Delia Sherman's previous books: "Multilayered, compassionate, and thought-provoking."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Fantastic in every sense of the word, Sherman's second novel (Through a Brazen Mirror) is a skillfully crafted fairy tale that owes as much to E.T.A. Hoffman as to Charles Perrault...The Porcelain Dove is no dainty vertu but a seductive, sinister bird with razored feathers."--Publishers Weekly Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City. Her work has appeared most recently in the anthologies Naked City, Steampunk!, and Queen Victoria's Book of Spells. She is the author of six novels including The Porcelain Dove (a New York Times Notable Book), The Freedom Maze, and Changeling, and has received the Mythopoeic and Norton awards. She lives in New York City.
Gardening is so much more than planting and watering, it's watching and tending to miracles every single day. This garden log will help you track what you've planted as well as your successes and failures. It's perfect for beginners and seasoned gardeners.
When we think about Victorian factories, 'Dark Satanic Mills' might spring to mind - images of blackened buildings and exhausted, exploited workers struggling in unhealthy and ungodly conditions. But for some employees this image was far from the truth, and this is the subject of 'The Factory in a Garden' which traces the history of a factory gardens movement from its late-eighteenth century beginnings in Britain to its twenty-first century equivalent in Google's vegetable gardens at their headquarters in California. The book is the first study of its kind examining the development of parks, gardens, and outdoor leisure facilities for factories in Britain and America as a model for the reshaping of the corporate environment in the twenty-first century. This is also the first book to give a comprehensive account of the contribution of gardens, gardening and recreation to the history of responsible capitalism and ethical working practices.
A charming, fascinating and knowledgeable account of a year in the garden of "E.V.B." - Eleanor Vere Boyle, which was written over the year 1882/1883. This is believed to be the first reprint in 100 years of the eighth edition, which was published in 1892. The garden was at Huntercombe Manor (then in Buckinghamshire), the history of which goes back to the Domesday Book, and a short account of that history is included, together with a biography of "E.V.B." - who was a well-known Victorian author and illustrator. All who love gardens will find this book a joy and delight.
