Book news: Art of the Devon Garden / A Wren-like Note

The Art of the Devon Garden, a fresh and innovative approach which opens up new ways to appreciate the garden history of Devon. As the art of gardening developed, so too did the depiction in art of those plants and gardens.  This study comprises 677 historical images, some created in glass, pottery, fabric, wood and stone as well as on paper and canvas – illuminated manuscripts, medieval vestments, Jacobean carved wood, Georgian porcelain and Victorian stained glass are just some of the surprising forms which are examined. Many images have never been reproduced nor are known except to specialists.The art has been brought together from private collections as well as from archives, museums, libraries and other institutions in England and the United States.  Obscure and unknown artists are included as well as some of England's leading figures such as Francis Danby, Nicholas Hilliard, William Morris, Joshua Reynolds & J. M. W. Turner. Some of today's most popular gardens are featured as well as others which have long vanished.  Elizabethan herb gardens, seventeenth-century formal parterres, Georgian Picturesque landscapes and Victorian herbaceous borders are all expressed through art. The result is a visual history of Devon's gardens.

Maxwell Gray became a household name in 1886 with The Silence of Dean Maitland, a sensational and best-selling novel, set in a thinly-disguised Isle of Wight, about an ambitious churchman who gets a coachman’s daughter pregnant, kills her father in a fight, then stays silent when his best friend is jailed for the crime. Few knew that “Maxwell Gray” was the pseudonym of a Newport doctor’s daughter, Mary Gleed Tuttiett, who went on to write some 20 novels and numerous other works despite invalidity that left her bedridden, and unable to work more than 2-3 hours a day.Her novels – many set in identifiable locations such as “Oldport”, “Malbourne” and “Barling” – give a vivid picture of the Isle of Wight, and England in general, as the clear-cut social order of the 19th century gave way to the uncertainties of the 20th. A Wren-like Noteis due for launch as a print-on-demand paperback at the beginning of December 2013.