The Most Beautiful Gardens Ever Written

The Most Beautiful Gardens Ever Written: A Guide leads readers through some of the most significant gardens in literature that explore love, depict the stalker mentality, criticize the government, memorialize extravagance and stupidity, exhibit gentlemanliness, exemplify futility, make fun of the bourgeoisie, and record childhood anxiety and parental strife.

“Are gardens anything more than collections of plants? Spaces for leisure activities? Extensions that protect the private house from the public road? Art objects appreciated by a relatively small group of connoisseurs? To consider such questions this guidebook invites readers on a tour of ten beautiful gardens as depicted in thousands and thousands of pages of fiction writt en by the most skillful of novelists over a period of almost a millennium.”

— Jane Gillete