Book of the Week

I thought it could be interesting to take full advantage of the generosity of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and offer up an antiquarian text each week.  And as this is predominantly a garden history blog I thought I would begin with the the first book dedicated entirely to the history of the British garden.

John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843)

John Claudius Loudon had included a section on world garden history in his An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1822) - oh what the heck heres the link for this too (3rd ed., 1825).

Then in 1826 George W Johnson, a barrister and proprietor of the periodical Cottage Gardener  published the snappily-titled A history of English gardening, chronological, biographical, literary, and critical. Tracing the progress of the art in this country from the invasion of the Romans to the present time. This is a copy of the 1829 edition, and you can download it as a pdf from the link.