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| Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens | 
 enlarge | Author: Vivian Russell
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Category: Book
List Price: £30.00
Buy Used: £12.97
You Save: £17.03 (57%)
New (26) from £18.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 140314
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 9.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 0711211558
Dewey Decimal Number: 635
EAN: 9780711211551
ASIN: 0711211558
Publication Date: September 26, 1997
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Though most know her as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of novels such as The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton was also something of a doyenne of domestic taste, and fortunately neither a nearsighted nor a parochial one. She published the first serious treatment of Italian garden architecture, Italian Villas and Their Gardens, in 1904. A lifelong Italophile as well as a lifelong gardener herself, Wharton had an instinctive attraction to both the clipped precision and the sensuous disarray that characterise an Italian villa garden. Nineteen of the gardens Wharton and her illustrator Maxfield Parrish brought to public attention are virtually unchanged by the passage of the single century since her descriptions were written. Garden photographer and writer Vivian Russell has recaptured both the essence of the gardens themselves and Wharton's experience of them in a series of luscious photographs and historical summaries of each garden. The Villa Cetinale, pictured on the cover from the vantage point of its lemon garden, was singled out by Wharton for its charm and its long green park, marked by a 15th-century gateway at one end and a romitorio, or hermitage, at the other. The book's considerable charm lies in the historical perspective it affords of Wharton and her Victorian colleagues as well as the many centuries borne so gracefully by the beautiful land they loved. It's a marvellous homage to Wharton and a must-read for all lovers of things Italian.
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| Customer Reviews:
Italian beauty and history combined June 11, 2001
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
A potted history for those who love Italy but do not have the time to read all the originals. It is a marvellous coffee table book and works very well in two ways. It will inspire you to go and seek out those gardens which are off the tourist trail and gives any reader a sense of how Renaissance and Mannerist gardens came to be. There are some wonderful photographs, although one or two are incorrectly titled, and a few early diagrams which enrich the text of this sumptous book.Only addresses and telephone numbers are given of the gardens featured so this book does require you to do a lot of practical planning before you go. It makes the perfect book however, to be read before and after the visit, in contrast to Italian Gardens (Helena Attlee and Alex Ramsay) which gives all the infomation you require and will fit very easily into handbag or pocket. If this book doesn't inspire you to your own version of the Modern Grand Tour I don't think anything will. From visits I have made to featured gardens I have not been disappointed and very often concur with both of the Authors on their views and opinions. My personal favourites are Villa D' Este, just outside Rome and Vill Gamberaia in Settignano, Florence. Both are exquisite. If you have any interest at all in gardens or gardening then this book will inspire you to visit and enhance the time you spend there. On your return it will be a treasured souvenir.
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