The eighteenth century opinions, descriptions, controversies

Author(s)

• Charlesworth, Michael

Bibliographic Information

The eighteenth century opinions, descriptions, controversies

（The Helm Information literary sources & documents series, . The English garden : literary sources & documents / edited and with an introduction by Michael Charlesworth ; v. 2）

Helm Information, c1993

Other Title

The English garden : literary sources and documents

Note

Series statement is only in vol. 1

Vol. 1 & 3: <BA22001667>

Contents of Works

• Deism and the house of Hanover / Samuel Clarke
• Preface and dedication to the Queen / Batty Langley
• A description of the royal gardens at Richmond / Anonymous
• Poems celebrating the hermitage at Richmond / Anonymous
• Poems ridiculing Caroline's hermitage / Anonymous
• Letter to Martha Blount, the Earl of Strafford and William Fortescue / Alexander Pope
• A plan of Mr Pope's garden / John Serle
• The cave of Pope : a prophecy / Robert Dodsley
• An epistolary description of the late Mr. Pope's house and gardens at Twickenham / Anonymous
• Pope's conversation about garden matters / Joseph Spence
• Imitations of Horace : satire II ii / Alexander Pope
• Moral essays : epistle to Burlington / Alexander Pope
• Stowe / Gilbert West
• Stowe gardens / Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson
• A dialogue upon the gardens / William Gilpin
• 'The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!' / James Thomson
• Hagley, the British tempè / James Thomson
• Castle Howard / Anne, Viscountess Irwin
• Letters to the Earl of Carlisle / Sir Thomas Robinson
• An occasional draught of the gardens at Wentworth house / Anonymous
• Orange grove and Queen square / John Wood
• A description of Rousham / John Macclary
• Journal / Philip Yorke
• Seats and gardens near Richmond and Kew / Anonymous
• Fragments on gardening / Joseph Spence and Philip Southcote
• From The World / Richard Owen Cambridge ... [et al.]
• From The Clandestine marriage / George Colman and David Garrick
• Two descriptions of Vauxhall gardens / Tobias Smollett
• Unconnected thoughts on gardening / William Shenstone
• Letters / William Shenstone
• A description of the Leasowes / Robert Dodsley
• A conversation at the Leasowes between William Shenstone, James Thompson and William Lyttelton / William Shenstone
• The Leasowes / Arthur Young
• A critical view of the Leasowes / William Gilpin
• A sketch of the Leasowes, and of the character of the worthy possessor of that place / Richard Graves
• A description of the gardens and buildings at Kew / Anonymous
• Letters on Stourhead / Harry Hoare
• Visits to country seats / Horace Walpole
• A six months' tour thro' the North of England / Arthur Young
• An essay on design in gardening / George Mason
• Observations on modern gardening / Thomas Whatley
• The history of the modern taste in gardening / Horace Walpole
• A dissertation on oriental gardening and an explanatory discourse / Sir William Chambers
• An heroic epistle to Sir William Chambers, knight / William Mason and Horace Walpole
• The English garden / William Mason
• Articles of work to be performed at Sandbeck / Lancelot Brown and the Earl of Scarborough
• Letter to Thomas Dyer / Lancelot Brown
• Letter describing a conversation with Brown / Hannah More
• Epitaph on 'capability' Brown / William Whitehead
• Letters about Brown's work at Sandleford priory, 1782-1783 / Elizabeth Montagu
• The Black act, 1723 / The Houses of Parliament
• A letter to The Salisbury journal / Anonymous
• Warning notice, 1812 / Duncombe Park Estate
• The deserted village / Oliver Goldsmith
• The task / William Cowper
• Four poems / John Clare

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In a country with a long and vigorous tradition of making gardens of all sizes, dating back to long before the Renaissance, and then of writing about the gardens that have been made, no single collection could ever cover all the literature available. There exists a vast record of responses to gardens on many different levels: as the providers of food and sensory stimulus; as the material for philosophical and religious meditation; as landscapes, that is, aesthetic objects designed to chiefly to be looked at; as sites for imaginative play and escapades. The sources and documents collected in these volumes are representative of these responses, and can be grouped in three broad categories: there are many descriptions of historical gardens, which blend visitors' responses with attempts to describe the gardens visited; there are "prescriptions" by writers of what ideal gardens "should" look like, many fanciful and some philosophically serious; finally, there are "meditations" on gardens and the processes of garden-making, which attempt to reach different, more rigorous or more suggestive levels of response. These categories have not been separated out from each other - they are mixed up within the chronological and thematic progressions in order to allow the full intertextual play of the discourse to emerge. "Volume 1" covers the late-16th, 17th and early-18th centuries which saw the creation of the idea that gardens could be terrains that were morally, as well as physically important. As garden-makers on different social levels, from yeoman farmers to arstocrats and monarchs, publicized and reflected in their work, there is seen a variety of motivations, from snobbery to scientific impulse, from religion to the pursuit of beautiful, earthly places, combining to assert the high moral and aesthetic possibilities of gardening and gardens as areas for representation. "Volume 2" breaks from a chronological sequence to group into themes the material about the crucially important 18th century. It opens with a section about important specific gardens - the socially and intellectually influential garden of Queen Caroline at Richmond (1732), that of the poet Alexander Pope, and the gardens of Stowe which belonged to an aristocrat active in government, military and cultural fields. Themes of cultural politics unfold around many more examples, some canonical, some associated with famous gardeners, such as Lancelot "Capability" Brown, and others which are much less known and even obscure. Certain source materials are presented for the first time. A major section deals with theoretical works of the period 1768-1772, which can be regarded in some senses as the high-water mark for gardens as aesthetically, morally and politically engrossing domains. The volume concludes with consideration of the legal status of gardens, and the poetry of protest against acts of landscape gardening. "Volume 3" returns to a chronological progression to chart the subsequent history of garden literature in England. There are responses from poets, jobbing gardeners, an Egyptologist and architects. The volume reflects both the responses of visitors, such as Samuel Johnson, Wiliam Gilpin and William Cobbett, and the active presences of Humphry Repton and J.C. Loudon who intervened both practically and theoretically to change the course of garden-making. Selections after 1850 become necessarily less comprehensive, focusing simply on the late debate about the art of gardens undertaken by Gertrude Jekyll, William Robinson and Reginald Blomfield, and including items that begin to intimate some of the major currents in conceptions of gardens in the 20th century, when traditional ideas about scale, representation and integrity became fragmented. Taken together, these three volumes provide a resource of primary" source material for students and researchers in the fields of English literature, garden and architectural history and English social history.

Table of Contents

• Volume 1 A chronological overview 1550-1730: Elizabethan polarities
• contructing the moral domain
• taking stock
• blueprints and critiques
• professional opinions
• "my own territories"
• Volume 2 The 18th century - opinions, decriptions and controversies: Queen Caroline's Hermitage at Richmond Gardens
• Alexander Pope's garden and garden writing
• Stowe
• brief descriptions 1732-1765
• aesthetic judgements 1752-1771
• William Shenstone and the Leasowes
• brief descriptions 1760-1770
• theoretical writings 1768-1772
• Lancelot "Capability" Brown
• the law and gardens
• protests against landscape gardening and enclosure. Volume 3 Chronological overview 1772-1910.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA22001918
• ISBN:
  • 1873403119
• LCCN: 94159679
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Mountfield, East Sussex, U.K.
• Pages/Volumes: ix, 590 p.
• Size: 25 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : PR1111.G3
  • DC20 : 820.8047126
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Gardens, English -- Literary collections
  • LCSH : Gardening -- England -- History -- Sources
  • LCSH : Gardens -- England -- History -- Sources
  • LCSH : English literature -- 18th century
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA20406089