Nineteenth-Century Gardens and Gardening: Volume I: Home

This volume is number one of a six volume collection that brings together primary sources on gardens and gardening across the long nineteenth-century. Economic expansion, empire, the growth of the middle classes and suburbia, the changing role of women and the professionalisation of gardening, alongside industrialisation and the development of leisure and mass markets were all elements that contributed to and were influenced by the evolution of gardens. It is a subject that is both global and multidisciplinary and this set provides the reader with a variety of ways in which to read gardens – through recognition of how they were conceived and experienced as they developed. Material is primarily derived from Britain, with Europe, USA, Australia, India, China and Japan also featuring, and sources include the gardening press, the broader press, government papers, book excerpts and some previously unpublished material.

About the Author

Dr Sarah Dewis followed a career in graphic design at the BBC and completed her doctorate at Birkbeck University of London. She contributed to The Lure of Illustration in Nineteenth Centiury Picture and Press (2009) and to the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (2009) . She has lectured at the Institute of Historical Research (2014) and is the author of The Loudons and the Gardening Press (2014).

Dr Brent Elliott was Librarian of the Royal Horticultural Society from 1982 to 2007, and since 2007 has been the Society’s Historian. He is the author of Victorian Gardens (1986), Treasures of the Royal Horticultural Society (1994), The Country House Garden (1995), Flora: an Illustrated History of the Garden Flower (2001), The Royal Horticultural Society: a History 1804-2004 (2004), and most recently, RHS Chelsea Flower Show: a Centenary Celebration (2013). A former editor of Garden History, he is currently editor of Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library. He is a member of the Victorian Society’s Buildings Committee, and for 25 years was a member of the Historic Parks and Gardens Committee/Panel of English Heritage.