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Jackie Bennett

Teoksen There's Something About a Convent Girl tekijä

19 teosta 240 jäsentä 5 arvostelua

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Sisältää nimet: Bennett Jackie, Jackie P. Bennett

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The Writer's Garden by Jackie Bennett is an ideal book to read and even just flip through when you need a break from heavy reading but also want to learn about important figures.

I know I made this sound like a diversion, which in some ways it is for me, I want to emphasize that the short profiles offer some excellent insights into each writer's influences. So this volume stands on its own as both an attractive coffee table book and an informative guide to the role of gardens in literature.

When I said profiles above, I should clarify that both the gardens and grounds as well as the writer are profiled. I found it to be a wonderful blend of detail about the gardens, how the gardens influenced the writers, and a few specific instances of locations being used within their works of fiction. It actually made me pull a couple volumes off my shelves and put in my TBR stack, it has been too long since I have revisited them and this new perspective will offer me another avenue into them. Not to mention that Woolf was prominent in another book I recently read.

Whether you simply want an attractive and informative coffee table book or you're especially interested in what has influenced some of our greatest writers, this volume will be an excellent addition to your library.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
… (lisätietoja)
½
 
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pomo58 | Sep 7, 2023 |
Shakespeare’s Garden by Jackie Bennett with photos by Andrew Lawson is a photo essay of the gardens that Shakespeare may have been familiar with as he was writing his plays and sonnets. Plants and flowers were common in his works and Bennett tries to describe the gardens of the day and those he may have seen.

Gardens in Shakespeare’s time served many purposes. Ornamental gardens were just being introduced. Most gardens served a purpose–to feed a family, to produce herbs and plants for medicinal purposes, to feed livestock. As Shakespeare’s popularity and fame increased, he traveled between London and Stratford on Avon. He came into contact with royalty and commoners. As a result, he would have been familiar with both royal gardens as well as common gardens of the working class. He would also have been familiar with the medical and household uses of many of herbs and flowers.

Many of the Shakespeare properties have been purchased by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) and have been restored. Shakespeare’s Garden was published in association with the Trust.

Per the publisher: “From his birthplace in Henley Street, to his childhood playground at Mary Arden’s Farm, to his courting days at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and his final home at New Place – where he created a garden to reflect his fame and wealth. Cared for by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, these gardens are continually evolving to reflect our ongoing knowledge of his life. The book will also explore the plants that Shakespeare knew and wrote about in 17th century England: their use in his work and the meanings that his audiences would have picked up on…”

While the narrative describes the gardens and there are tidbits of botanic quotes from Shakespeare’s plays, it is the photos that bring everything to life. Andrew Lawson’s photos will make gardeners drool. While I was hoping for more of an explanation of the meanings of the flowers and plants Shakespeare used in his works, and there was little of that in Shakespeare’s Garden, I was not disappointed by the book. I wish I could have a fraction of one of the gardens photographed in the book. Shakespeare’s Garden is definitely worth the time. It is totally enjoyable.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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EdGoldberg | Sep 25, 2017 |
Interesting for a few of the stories — Carmen Callil's, for example, for its brief description of the influence of Frost in May on the creation of the Virago Modern Classics series, and Germaine Greer because, well, simply because it's Germaine Greer — but overall the stories were simply too short and tended toward the superficial.… (lisätietoja)
½
 
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CurrerBell | Oct 11, 2015 |
What is it about authors and gardens? Is it the authors’ artistic natures that attract them to gardens? There are authors well known for the gardening interests such as Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson and Beatrix Potter, whose gardens are artistically recreated in her books. For more on that, read the wonderful Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell which features photos of her gardens, Potter’s drawings of flowers and scenes from her books.BeatrixPottersGardeningLife

The Writer in the Garden edited by Jane Garmey includes essays by such diverse authors as E. B. White, Alexander Pope, Edith Wharton and M.F.K. Fisher.

However, it is Jackie Bennett’s The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Best-Loved Authors that stands out. She has produced a wonderful pictorial essay on 20 British authors who loved and were devoted to their gardens. The authors range from Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) and his Shandy Hall and John Clare (1793-1864) and his Heplston to Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and his Gad’s Hill Place and Henry James (1843-1916) and his Lamb House to Roald Dahl (1916-1990) and his Gipsy House and Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and his Lumb Bank.

Bennett provides a smattering of the authors’ biographies, descriptions of their gardens and the impact on the authors’ works and enough photos to make every gardener jealous. The photos of the English countryside make it appear just as you imagine it from reading Jane Austen, the mist, the open spaces, the hills.

There’s the odd tidbit, such as Lamb House originally inhabited by Henry James was later inhabited by the author E. F. Benson or that Roald Dahl had a gypsy caravan on his property. Many of the estates were donated to England’s National Trust and can be visited by tourists. Others are artist’s colonies/retreats, in an effort to maintain the author’s vision.

The appendices include Garden Visiting Information, Source of Quotes and Further Reading. What a great vacation it would be to visit each author’s house and view his/her garden.

If you are at all interested in literature and gardening, this is the book for you. It is no coffee-table book. It is a book to be read, its photos to be viewed again and again.

I’m sure there are more than the 20 British authors mentioned in this book who were interested in gardens. I’d love to see Volume II or a book featuring American authors.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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EdGoldberg | Dec 30, 2014 |

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Tilastot

Teokset
19
Jäseniä
240
Suosituimmuussija
#94,569
Arvio (tähdet)
3.9
Kirja-arvosteluja
5
ISBN:t
32
Kielet
2

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