The English Garden and National Identity
The English Garden and National Identity
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This book examines the fierce debate on the styles and forms of garden design that took place in England c. 1870–1914. Focusing on the wild garden, the cottage garden, the formal garden and the synthesis of the formal and natural styles, Anne Helmreich argues that design principles and debates between designers including William Robinson, Reginald Blomfield, Gertrude Jekyll, and Edwin Lutyens, were indelibly shaped by the quest for a powerful English national identity. She demonstrates how 'Englishness' was purportedly expressed through the leading styles of garden design and why the garden was promoted as a symbol of national identity. A wide range of cultural practices and institutions, from garden treatises, popular journals, historic preservation organizations, art exhibitions, and two world's fairs, are investigated to reveal how the garden, as a physical artifact and as an idea, circulated widely to produce a unifying national image.
- Analyzes gardens within cultural context
- Explores gardening history
- Discusses broad sampling of garden designers from time period
Reviews & endorsements
"Excellent..." Pre-Raphaelite Studies
"Cambridge University Press's The English Garden and National Identity will catch the attention of all those interested in garden history. The American author, Anne Helmreich, examines the implications of fashions in gardening and of garden design between 1870 and the outbreak of World War I to reveal that that much writing on the subject was used to promoted nationalistic notions of "Englishness": the garden was promoted as a symbol of national identity." Art Newspaper
"Satisfyingly accessible." H-Albion
Product details
September 2002Hardback
9780521592932
302 pages
255 × 184 × 25 mm
0.822kg
110 b/w illus. 8 colour illus.
Unavailable - out of print April 2019
Table of Contents
- 1. Janus-faced England
- 2. Re-presenting the countryside: William Robinson and the wild garden
- 3. Domesticating the nation: the cottage garden
- 4. Ordering the landscape: the Art Workers Guild and the formal garden
- 5. The battle of the styles and the recounting of English garden history
- 6. Gertrude Jekyll: transforming the local into the national
- 7. Jekyll and Lutyens: resolving the debate.
