To celebrate Earth Day and the beginning of Spring, the FDU Florham Library will display books and other visual materials that illustrate the intersections between nature, art, and literature. The "Nature & Art" display will remain active through the remainder of the Spring 2024 semester, so be sure to check it out during your next library visit!
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery by
From the fifteenth century onwards, as European explorers sailed forth on grand voyages of discovery, their encounters with exotic plants and animals fanned intense scientific interest. Scholars began to examine nature with fresh eyes, and pioneering artists transformed the way nature was seen and understood. In Amazing Rare Things, renowned naturalist and documentary-maker David Attenborough joins with expert colleagues to explore how artists portrayed the natural world during this era of burgeoning scientific interest. The book focuses on an exquisite selection of natural history drawings and watercolors by Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Mark Catesby, and from the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo--works all held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Attenborough and his coauthors offer lucid commentary on topics ranging from the 30,000-year history of human drawings of the natural world, to Leonardo’s fascination with natural processes, to Catesby’s groundbreaking studies that introduced Europeans to the plants and animals of North America. With 160 full color illustrations, this beautiful book will appeal to readers with interests that extend from art and science to history and nature.
American Transcenentalism: A History by
The First Comprehensive History of Transcendentalism "American Transcendentalism" is a comprehensive narrative history of America's first group of public intellectuals, the men and women who defined American literature and indelibly marked American reform in the decades before and following the America Civil War. Philip F. Gura masterfully traces their intellectual genealogy to transatlantic religious and philosophical ideas, illustrating how these informed the fierce local theological debates that, so often first in Massachusetts and eventually throughout America, gave rise to practical, personal, and quixotic attempts to improve, even perfect the world. The transcendentalists would painfully bifurcate over what could be attained and how, one half epitomized by Ralph Waldo Emerson and stressing self-reliant individualism, the other by Orestes Brownson, George Ripley, and Theodore Parker, emphasizing commitment to the larger social good. By the 1850s, the uniquely American problem of slavery dissolved differences as transcendentalists turned ever more exclusively to abolition. Along with their early inheritance from European Romanticism, America's transcendentalists abandoned their interest in general humanitarian reform. By war's end, transcendentalism had become identified exclusively with Emersonian self-reliance, congruent with the national ethos of political liberalism and market capitalism.
Andreas Gursky by
Andreas Gursky has been widely celebrated for his monumental, extraordinarily detailed pictures, often exploring contemporary global themes. This comprehensive book takes a fresh look at the artist's iconic images from the past four decades. In a landmark conversation between two of the most significant figures in contemporary photography, Gursky talks to Jeff Wall about the sources for his photographic vision, while an essay by Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff explores important but often neglected areas of the artist's work. Essays by art historian Gerald Schröder and writer-curator Brian Sholis provide new insight into key pictures, and artist Katharina Fritsch offers personal snapshots of her Düsseldorf colleague, creating a portrait of the artist in the round. Presenting the artist's most well known works - including Paris, Montparnasse (1993), 99 Cent (2001) and Chicago Board of Trade III (2009) - as well as new, previously unpublished photographs, this is an indispensible survey of forty years of work from one of the world's most influential artists. 'I only pursue one goal: the encyclopedia of life.' -Andreas Gursky
Avian Illuminations: A Cultural History of Birds by
An exquisitely illustrated journey through the complex and crucial relationship between humans and birds. Avian Illuminations examines the many roles birds have played in human society, from food, messengers, deities, and pets, to omens, muses, timekeepers, custodians, hunting companions, decorative motifs, and, most importantly, embodiments of our aspirations. Boria Sax narrates the history of our relationships with a host of bird species, including crows, owls, parrots, falcons, eagles, nightingales, hummingbirds, and many more. Along the way, Sax describes how birds' nesting has symbolized human romance, how their flight has inspired inventors throughout history, and he concludes by showing that the interconnections between birds and humans are so manifold that a world without birds would effectively mean an end to human culture itself. Beautifully illustrated, Avian Illuminations is a superb overview of humanity's long and rich association with our avian companions.
The Beauty of Chemistry: Art, Wonder, and Science by
Images and text capture the astonishing beauty of the chemical processes that create snowflakes, bubbles, flames, and other wonders of nature. Chemistry is not just about microscopic atoms doing inscrutable things; it is the process that makes flowers and galaxies. We rely on it for bread-baking, vegetable-growing, and producing the materials of daily life. In stunning images and illuminating text, this book captures chemistry as it unfolds. Using such techniques as microphotography, time-lapse photography, and infrared thermal imaging,The Beauty of Chemistryshows us how chemistry underpins the formation of snowflakes, the science of champagne, the colors of flowers, and other wonders of nature and technology. We see the marvelous configurations of chemical gardens; the amazing transformations of evaporation, distillation, and precipitation; heat made visible; and more.
Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing by
On a summer day in 1674, in the small Dutch city of Delft, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek--a cloth salesman, local bureaucrat, and self-taught natural philosopher--gazed through a tiny lens set into a brass holder and discovered a never-before imagined world of microscopic life. At the same time, in a nearby attic, the painter Johannes Vermeer was using another optical device, a camera obscura, to experiment with light and create the most luminous pictures ever beheld. "See for yourself!" was the clarion call of the 1600s. Scientists peered at nature through microscopes and telescopes, making the discoveries in astronomy, physics, chemistry, and anatomy that ignited the Scientific Revolution. Artists investigated nature with lenses, mirrors, and camera obscuras, creating extraordinarily detailed paintings of flowers and insects, and scenes filled with realistic effects of light, shadow, and color. By extending the reach of sight the new optical instruments prompted the realization that there is more than meets the eye. But they also raised questions about how we see and what it means to see. In answering these questions, scientists and artists in Delft changed how we perceive the world. In Eye of the Beholder, Laura J. Snyder transports us to the streets, inns, and guildhalls of seventeenth-century Holland, where artists and scientists gathered, and to their studios and laboratories, where they mixed paints and prepared canvases, ground and polished lenses, examined and dissected insects and other animals, and invented the modern notion of seeing. With charm and narrative flair Snyder brings Vermeer and Van Leeuwenhoek--and the men and women around them--vividly to life. The story of these two geniuses and the transformation they engendered shows us why we see the world--and our place within it--as we do today.
Flowers by
The theme of flowers recurs throughout Robert Mapplethorpe's photographic work. Some of the 50 flower images in this collection, all in colour, date from the early 1980s, but many of them from the months leading to his death in 1989.
Manet: The Still-Life Paintings by
Of all the paintings by the Impressionist master Edouard Manet, nearly one-fifth are still lifes, a genre the artist himself considered "the touchstone of painting". This sumptuous volume, published to accompany a landmark exhibition at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, is the first major book to focus on this crucial aspect of Manet's work.Throughout his career, and especially later in his life, Manet devoted considerable energy to still lifes, producing oils, watercolors, and prints that unite exuberant personal expression with a flawless mastery of light and detail. With informative text, including an enlightening essay by Henri Loyrette, director of the Musee d'Orsay, Manet: The Still-Life Paintings features lush, full-page colorplates as well as full-bleed details of what some critics consider the finest examples of still-life painting ever executed.The exhibition this book accompanies has been organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
The Meaning of Gardens: Idea, Place, and Action by
Gardens reveal the relationship between culture and nature, yet in the vast library of garden literature few books focus on what the garden means - on the ecology of garden as idea, place, and action. The Meaning of Gardens maps out how the garden is perceived, designed, used, and valued. Essays from a variety of disciplines are organized around six metaphors special to our time - the garden muses of Faith, Power, Ordering, Cultural Expression, Personal Expression, and Healing. Each muse suggests specific inspirations for garden and landscape design.
Nature's Nation: American Art and Environment by
A groundbreaking ecocritical exploration of American art that examines the complex and evolving relationship between art and the environment Public awareness of environmental issues has never been greater, nor has the need for imagining more sustainable and ethical habits of human action and thought, including environmentally informed ways of understanding art history. This multidisciplinary book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and examines the environmental contexts of artistic practice from the colonial period to the present day. Tracing how visions of the environment have changed from the Native-European encounter to the emergence of modern ecological activism, more than a dozen scholars and practitioners discuss how artists have both responded to and actively instigated changes in ecological understanding. Far-reaching in its interpretive approach, Nature's Nation looks at artworks across genres and media--including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, decorative arts, and video--revealing important new discoveries about creative encounters with environmental history and politics through materials, techniques, subjects, and ideas. The book features work by more than one hundred artists, from Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Cole, and Winslow Homer to Georgia O'Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Providing a fascinating and timely reframing of more than three centuries of American art, this volume is a powerful example of how greater ecological consciousness can expand and enrich the discipline of art history.
A New Literary History of Modern China by
Literature, from the Chinese perspective, makes manifest the cosmic patterns that shape and complete the world--a process of "worlding" that is much more than mere representation. In that spirit, A New Literary History of Modern China looks beyond state-sanctioned works and official narratives to reveal China as it has seldom been seen before, through a rich spectrum of writings covering Chinese literature from the late-seventeenth century to the present. Featuring over 140 Chinese and non-Chinese contributors from throughout the world, this landmark volume explores unconventional forms as well as traditional genres--pop song lyrics and presidential speeches, political treatises and prison-house jottings, to name just a few. Major figures such as Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, Eileen Chang, and Mo Yan appear in a new light, while lesser-known works illuminate turning points in recent history with unexpected clarity and force. Many essays emphasize Chinese authors' influence on foreign writers as well as China's receptivity to outside literary influences. Contemporary works that engage with ethnic minorities and environmental issues take their place in the critical discussion, alongside writers who embraced Chinese traditions and others who resisted. Writers' assessments of the popularity of translated foreign-language classics and avant-garde subjects refute the notion of China as an insular and inward-looking culture. A vibrant collection of contrasting voices and points of view, A New Literary History of Modern China is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of China's literary and cultural legacy.
The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry by
For over two centuries, black poets have created verse that captures the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their variety of visions and styles, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry aims to offer nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people. Here are poems by writers as different as Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. Du Bois; Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes; Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka; Rita Dove and Harryette Mullen; Yusef Komunyakaa and Nathaniel Mackey. Acclaimed as a biographer and editor, Arnold Rampersad groups these poems as meditations on key issues in black culture, including the idea of Africa; the South; slavery; protest and resistance; the black man, woman, and child; sexuality and love; music and religion; spirituality; death and transcendence. With their often starkly contrasting visions and styles, these poets illuminate some of the more controversial and intimate aspects of the black American experience. Poetry here is not only or mainly a vehicle of protest but also an exploration of the complex and tender subtleties of black culture. One section offers tributes to celebrated leaders such as Sojourner Truth and Malcolm X, but many more reflect the heroism compelled by everyday black life. The variety of poetic forms and language captures the brilliant essence of English as mastered by black Americans dedicated to the art of poetry. Loving and yet also honest and unsparing, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry is for readers who treasure both poetry and the genius of black America.
Palm-of-the Hand Stories by
Translated by Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, Yasunari Kawabata is perhaps best known in the United States for his deeply incisive, marvelously lyrical novel "Snow Country." But according to Kawabata himself, the essence of his art was to be found in a series of short stories-which he called "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories"-written over the entire span of his career. He began experimenting with the form in 1923 and returned to it often. In fact, his final work was a "palm-sized" reduction of "Snow Country," written not long before his suicide in 1972. Dreamlike, intensely atmospheric, at times autobiographical and at others fantastical, these stories reflect Kawabata's abiding interest in the miniature, the wisp of plot reduced to the essential. In them we find loneliness, love, the passage of time, and death. "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories" captures the astonishing range and complexity of one of the century's greatest literary talents.
The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by
In 1772, upon the death of her second husband, Mary Delany arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors, and, at the age of seventy-two, created a new art form: mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany produced an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica. As she tracks the extraordinary life of Delany-friend of George Frideric Handel and Jonathan Swift-internationally acclaimed poet Molly Peacock weaves in delicate parallels in her own life and, in doing so, creates a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art. This gorgeously designed book, featuring thirty-five full-color illustrations, is to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.
The Pressed Plant: The Art of Botanical Specimens, Nature Prints, and Sun Pictures by
This book examines artwork created through the preservation of plants.
The River of Consciousness by
From the best-selling author of Gratitude, On the Move, and Musicophilia, a collection of essays that displays Oliver Sacks's passionate engagement with the most compelling and seminal ideas of human endeavor: evolution, creativity, memory, time, consciousness, and experience. Oliver Sacks, a scientist and a storyteller, is beloved by readers for the extraordinary neurological case histories (Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars) in which he introduced and explored many now familiar disorders--autism, Tourette's syndrome, face blindness, savant syndrome. He was also a memoirist who wrote with honesty and humor about the remarkable and strange encounters and experiences that shaped him (Uncle Tungsten, On the Move, Gratitude). Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.
Snow Flowers: Hungarian Jewish Women in an Airplane Factory, Markkleeberg, Germany by
Zahava Szsz Stessel is the author of Wine and Thorns in Tokay Valley, Jewish Life in Hungary: The History of Abajsznt (FDUP, 1995). She has given papers at international conferences and her articles on the Holocaust have appeared in English, Hungarian, and Israeli publications. Dr. Stessel and her sister were teenage prisoners in Auschwitz and assigned to factory work in Markkleeberg, Germany even though they could hardly reach the machines. In her return visits, Dr. Stessel spoke with groups of students and addressed the audience at the unveiling of a memorial at the former camp site. Her biography is part of a traveling exhibit, "The Forgotten Women of Buchenwald." Dr. Stessel is a retired librarian of The New York Public Library. She received her PhD from New York University.
Southwold: An Earthly Paradise by
Southwold is a nostalgic place where childhood memories are made from sunny holidays beside the sea, coloured beach huts lining the shore and the delicate pier straddling the waves of the North Sea. To some it is nothing short of an earthly paradise - indeed it was Southwold that inspired William Morris to write his epic poem "The Earthly Paradise". SOUTHWOLD - AN EARTHLY PARADISE is a collection of vividly written essays that take the reader through the evolution of the town from a mediaeval fishing community, prosperous enough to build a magnificent church, to its modern identity as a popular, yet unspoilt, holiday town. However its history is a troubled one. The sea, despite its changing moods has been the only constant in a past in which fire, famine and plague have devastated the town. A rich treasure of silver and silver gilt lies on the bottom of the coast of Southwold. It is a reminder of one of the fiercest fights in British history. The Battle of Sole Bay was fought against the Dutch in 1672 and the bloody confrontation is fully described and illustrated with contemporary paintings and drawings. The greatest genius of English literature, William Shakespeare heads an extraordinary cast of writers to have visited Southwold, including Algernon Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, Walter de la Mare, George Orwell, P. D. James and Esther Freud. J. M. W. Turner, one of Britain's most celebrated artists, is known to have visited Southwold on many occasions and Geoffrey Munn has, for the first time, identified a number of drawings of Southwold by Turner. Whistler, Sickert, Wilson Steer, Spencer, and Damien Hirst have all followed in Turner's footsteps. REVIEWS: 'Geoffrey Munn, clearly enraptured by the place, has produced the most beautiful, glossy, coffee-table tribute to the charming town.... lavishly enhanced by gorgeous paintings and photographs of the town....' - Daily Mail '.... a glorious book....' - The Lady 'Geoffrey Munn.... has an ear for history, an eye for art and a very neat way with words.... The touch is light, with considerable knowledge worn lightly.... The book is full of delightful touches and discoveries.' - Country Life ILLUSTRATIONS: 124 colour & 68 b/w illustrations
Steichen's Legacy: Photographs, 1895-1973 by
A magnificent book--315 photographs by Edward Steichen, the man Auguste Rodin called "the greatest photographer of his time." This is the first gathering in thirty years of Steichen's photographs, spanning seven decades: the landscapes, the haunting studies of flowers, the portraits of friends and family, the still lifes and cityscapes. Here are fashion photographs taken during the fifteen years Steichen worked forVogue.And here too are the breathtaking portraits he made forVanity Fair: Colette, Noel Coward, Greta Garbo, Willa Cather, Isadora Duncan . . . William Butler Yeats, Henri Matisse, Thomas Mann . . . George Gershwin, Amelia Earhart, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (taken when he was governor of New York--a standard pose, the decisive leader in his chair--but later, when FDR was president, cropped by Steichen to show the sad, serious face of a visionary acquainted with suffering). In a personal and illuminating text, Joanna Steichen writes about her husband's passionate views on photography; about how he moved away from painting (his understanding and support of modernism helped bring the movement to this country); about his experiments with abstraction; about the repercussions of commercial success in his life as an artist; about how he and Joanna first met (through the mischievous intervention of Steichen's brother-in-law, Carl Sandburg) and how their relationship changed as they became lovers, man and wife and, finally, artist and assistant. Joanna Steichen writes about Steichen's days as a colonel in World War I, in charge of aerial photography for the Air Force in France, and then as a captain in the Navy--past the age of retirement--in World War II, in charge of combat photography in the Pacific. She writes about his years as the European art scout for his friend Alfred Stieglitz, and of how Steichen later designed the gallery for the Photo-Secession's 291 and arranged exhibitions of the work of Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso and Brancusi, long before these names were known in America. And she writes about the couple's farm in Connecticut, which Steichen landscaped out of woods and rocks and hollows and photographed over the years, as well as the new hybrid of delphinium Steichen produced and the sunflowers he raised and studied through his lens. Carl Sandburg said: "A scientist and a speculative philosopher stands back of Steichen's best pictures. They will not yield their meaning and essence on the first look nor the thousandth--which is the test of masterpieces." Steichen's Legacyis a book of masterpieces.
A Summer of Hummingbirds by
The country's most noted writers, poets, and artists converge at a singular moment in American life, a great companion to fans of the film A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson. At the close of the Civil War, the lives of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade intersected in an intricate map of friendship, family, and romance that marked a milestone in the development of American art and literature. Using the image of a flitting hummingbird as a metaphor for the gossamer strands that connect these larger-than-life personalities, Christopher Benfey re-creates the summer of 1882, the summer when Mabel Louise Todd-the protégé to the painter Heade-confesses her love for Emily Dickinson's brother, Austin, and the players suddenly find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment and a new, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all.
Symmetry in Chaos: A Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art and Nature by
Chaotic dynamics (known popularly as chaos theory or, more simply, chaos) is among the most fascinating new fields in modern science, revolutionizing our understanding of order and pattern in nature. Symmetry, a traditional and highly developed area of mathematics, would seem to lie at the opposite end of the spectrum. From the branching of trees to the rose windows of great cathedrals, symmetric patterns seem the antithesis of such chaotic systems as weather patterns. And yet, scientists are now finding connections between these two areas, connections which could have profound consequences for our understanding of the physical world. In Symmetry in Chaos, mathematicians Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky offer an engaging look at where these two fields meet. In the process, they have generated mathematically a series of stunning computer images linking symmetry and chaos. Field and Golubitsky describe how a chaotic process eventually can lead to symmetric patterns (in a river, for instance, photographs of the turbulent movement of eddies, taken over time, often reveal patterns on average) and they provide clear explanations of the science that lies behind the generation of these pictures. And the images they generate are spectacular. Because of the symmetry, these full-color and black-and-white images--some chaotic and some fractal--have a surprisingly classical appearance. Indeed, through comparisons with pictures from nature, such as sea shells and flowers, and decorative designs ranging from Islamic motifs to contemporary graphic logos to ceramic tiles, the authors highlight the familiar yet unusual nature of these mysterious pictures. Finally, the book features an appendix containing several BASIC programs, which will enable home computer owners to experiment with similar images. This lavishly illustrated, oversized volume offers both a fascinating glimpse of the frontier of modern science and a stunning collection of remarkable images. Symmetry in Chaos will intrigue science buffs as well as anyone interested in decorative art and pattern design.
The Transcendentalists: An Anthology by
The late Perry Miller once stated, "I have been compelled to insist that the mind of man is the basic factor in human history," and his study of the mind in America has shaped the thought of three decades of scholars. The fifteen essays here collected-several of them previously unpublished-address themselves to the facets of the American consciousness and to their expression in literature from the time of the Cambridge Agreement to the Nobel Prize acceptance speeches of Hemingway and Faulkner. A companion volume to Errand into the Wilderness, its general theme is one adumbrated in Miller's two-volume masterpiece, The New England Mind-the thrust of civilization into the vast, empty continent and its effect upon Americans' concept of themselves as "nature's nation." The essays first concentrate on Puritan covenant theology and its gradual adaptation to changing condition in America: the decline in zeal for a "Bible commonwealth," the growth of trade and industry, and the necessity for coexisting with large masses of unchurched people. As the book progresses, the emphasis shifts from religion to the philosophy of nature to the development of an original literature, although Miller is usually analyzing simultaneously all three aspects of the American quest for self-identity. In the final essays, he shows how the forces that molded the self-conscious articulateness of the early New Englanders still operate in the work of contemporary American writers.
Watching Nature: A Mid-Atlantic Natural History by
Shows and describes common varieties of plants and animals, including bats, fish, skunks, insects, gulls, trees, berrys, and violets.
Where the Deer Were: Poems by
"Pastoral, narrative, deliberately lyrical, the poetry of Kate Barnes is set solidly in the rural Maine countryside, and in the literary tradition in which she was raised (her father was Henry Beston, her mother Elizabeth Coatsworth). There she lives near the house that Beston made famous in Northern Farm, drawing strength and inspiration from the coastal landscape to steady her through the changing seasons of life." "This is wise and moving verse: not abstract or self-consciously "modern," but clean and convincing - verse, as Robert Creeley has commented, "of a deep and heartfelt clarity." These are poems that examine and celebrate the ingredients of our humanity: friendship and wonder, loneliness and endurance, sexuality and unrequited longing, familial ties and the overriding relationship of the individual to nature, to landscape and animals, and to the living earth itself." "Printed letterpress and featuring six specially commissioned woodcuts by the renowned Vermont artist Mary Azarian, Where the Deer Were is a treasure that combines the best of poetry, art, and fine bookmaking."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Wordsworth Gardens and Flowers: The Spirit of Paradise by
A book that debunks the popular myth that William Wordsworth was, first and foremost, a poet of daffodils, Wordsworth's Gardens and Flowers: The Spirit of Paradise provides a vivid account of Wordsworth as a gardening poet who not only wrote about gardens and flowers but also designed - and physically worked in - his gardens. Wordsworth's Gardens and Flowers: The Spirit of Paradise is a book of two halves. The first section focuses on the gardens that Wordsworth made at Grasmere and Rydal in the English Lake District, and also in Leicestershire, at Coleorton. The gardens are explored via his poetry and prose and the journals of his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth. In the second half of the book, the reader learns more of Wordsworth's use of flowers in his poetry, exploring the vital importance of British flowers and other 'unassuming things' to his work, as well as their wider cultural, religious and political meaning. Throughout, the engaging, accessible text is woven around illustrations that bring Wordsworth's gardens and flowers to life, including rare botanical prints, many reproduced here for the first time in several decades. AUTHORS: Peter Dale took his degree at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is a poet, musician, antiquarian bookbinder and gardener who has contributed numerous articles to Hortus, the prestigious British horticultural journal. He is the author of a forthcoming book about the Irish garden and its spirit. Peter has lectured widely on music and literature, for the WEA and the Wordsworth Conference Foundation, amongst other institutions. Brandon C. Yen received his doctorate at Queens' College, Cambridge and is now a research fellow at University College Cork, where he works on Wordsworth's connections with Ireland. He is the author of a book-length study of Wordsworth's long poem, The Excursion (Liverpool University Press, 2018). In 2017, Brandon curated an exhibition on 'Wordsworth's Flowers' for the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere. SELLING POINTS: * The first book to explore both Wordsworth's gardens and the poet's literary use of flowers * Includes rare botanical prints reproduced for the first time in several decades * Focuses on Wordsworth's gardens in the English Lake District and Leicestershire * Draws extensively on hitherto unpublished manuscripts and artworks * Reproduces illustrations from early editions of Wordsworth 115 colour, 14 b/w images
