Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens [Hardcover]

Vivian Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1998

In 1903 Edith Wharton was commissioned by Century Magazine to write a series of articles on Italian villas and gardens. She gathered her household together and set off with her husband, her housekeeper and her small dogs on a four-month tour of Italy. Her articles were published in 1904 as Italian Villas and their Gardens. One of the first books to treat the subject of Italian garden architecture seriously, it influenced a generation of garden writers and landscape architects. Nearly 100 years later, photographer and writer Vivian Russell set out on her own odyssey, following Edith Wharton's footsteps around Italy to photograph the best surviving gardens from her book and to tell the story of how each one was made. her lively text describes the patrons and architects who created the gardens and explores their hidden symbolic meaning.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 characterize 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 marvelous homage to Wharton and a must-read for all lovers of things Italian.

From Booklist

Famous American author Edith Wharton adored Italy--adored Italian gardens, in particular. In 1904 she published a series of commentaries on that subject, Italian Villas and Their Gardens. Contemporary garden authority and photographer Russell recently followed the trail blazed by Wharton around the Italian peninsula, relooking at the gardens the previous writer had favored in her collection of articles, which has come to be regarded as a groundbreaking reckoning of Italian landscape art and architecture. The result is this lovely oversize book, which will appeal to gardeners and fiction devotees as well as travel enthusiasts. Beautifully composed and reproduced photos match the enthusiastic text (which tells the history of each villa) in fostering a real sense of seeing things as Wharton saw them and in compelling the viewer to appreciate the uniquely Italian aesthetics underlying the creation of the gardens. This book is a very nice treat. Brad Hooper

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821223976
• ISBN-13: 978-0821223970
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 10.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,531,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad at all, March 8, 2008

By 

Lupo Montegrigio (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens (Hardcover)

This is not the ultimate writing on Italian gardens, nor the most sumptuos as a coffee-table book. But you can do a lot worse than this when you search for garden books on Italy. And then there is the added dimension that Mrs Wharton drove up to these places a hundred years ago and had a look around. Gentle people alledgedly just showed up "never mind us, we're just here for a stroll in your lovely garden", not recommended today...
Photographs are very good/good. The selection of gardens covers the major part of the most celebrated, with a few minor ones added. No sites south of Rome alas, put the blame on Edith.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens, February 10, 2008

By 

Jade E. Forrester - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens (Hardcover)

With plenty of pics, this book is good for a casual flick through or a more careful read. The photographs of the gardens are stunning and inspire a desire to visit in person.