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A new edition of Nicola Shulman's miniature masterpiece about the life of gardener Reginald Farrer A hundred years ago, there was a revolution in British gardening, as the garden changed from being a diversion of dukes to the hobby of millions. Few figures were more prominent in this renaissance than Reginald Farrer, whose passion for alpines, the most demanding of plants, would inspire generations with a love of flowers. He was the man who put a rockery in every back garden. Tormented by physical and emotional misfortune, Farrer was one of those 'born to endless night'. Yet in the realm of horticulture his many faults were turned to advantages, and he became one of the great plant-hunters, collecting new species from the mountains of Tibet and China. Through the influence of his extraordinary books, Farrer did for English gardening what, half a century later, Elizabeth David would do for its cookery, changing everything forever.
From the travel writing of the eccentric plant collector and Reginald Farrer, to Emily Hahn’s insider depictions of bohemian life in semi-colonial Shanghai, to Ezra Pound’s mediated ‘journeys’ to Southwest China via the explorer Joseph Rock – Anglo-American representations of China during the first half of the twentieth century were often unconventional in terms of style, form, and content. By examining a range of texts that were written in the flux of travel – including poems, novels, autobiographies – this study argues that the tumultuous social and political context of China’s Republican Period (1912-49) was a key setting for conceptualizing cultural modernity in global and transnational terms. In contrast with accounts that examine China’s influence on Western modernism through language, translation, and discourse, the book recovers a materialist engagement with landscapes, objects, and things as transcribed through travel, ethnographic encounter, and embodied experience. The book is organized by three themes which suggest formal strategies through which notions cultural modernity were explored or contested: borderlands, cosmopolitan performances, and mobile poetics. As it draws from archival sources in order to develop these themes, this study offers a place-based historical perspective on China’s changing status in Western literary cultures.
Women in Dialogue: (M)Uses of Culture results from an international symposium held at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in 2006, which brought together scholars from over ten countries, and from multiple academic backgrounds, who share professional interest in women’s studies, and, to no less degree, in current women’s realities. The book presents a collection of essays united by a common focus on the position of women as objects of cultural production in different geographic, national, and political contexts, as well as the character and typology of women’s contribution to cultural activity across the ethnic or religious divide marking the face of contemporary world. The volume comprises two sections: the first, titled “Women in Dialogue,” contains contributions which analyze literary representations of women from a variety of perspectives, and from diverse spatial and temporal locations. The second part, titled “(M)Uses of Culture,” includes personalized observations by several women writers, of both poetry and fiction, their commentaries on their own work as artists, and their deeply experienced “musings” on the position of women as artists in the world of today. The essays that this volume brings together are varied in subject matter; yet they are connected by the common theme, epitomized in the metaphor of dialogue, as a platform for active, productive communication, leading – on the pages of the book, if not elsewhere – to learning, and mutual understanding.
The scientists and explorers profiled in this engaging study of pioneering Euro-American exploration of late imperial and Republican China range from botanists to ethnographers to missionaries. Although a diverse lot, all believed in objective, progressive, and universally valid science; a close association between scientific and humanistic knowledge; a lack of conflict between science and faith; and the union of the natural world and the world of "nature people." Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands examines their cultural and personal assumptions while emphasizing their remarkable lives, and considers their contributions to a body of knowledge that has important contemporary significance. Essays are devoted to D. C. Graham, Joseph Rock, Reginald Farrer and George Forrest, Ernest Henry Wilson, Paul Vial, Johan Gunnar Andersson and Ding Wenjiang, and Friedrich Weiss and Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg. Richly illustrated with historic photographs, this collection reveals the extraordinary lives and times of these remarkable people.
“An absolutely breathtaking book -- in its thoughtfulness and imaginativeness, in the breadth and depth of the research which it entailed, in its geographical, cultural, and historical situatedness, and in its profound critical empathy for all of the key players. Beautifully and skillfully written.” – Sydney White, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Women's Studies at Temple University "The Paper Road is an eloquent, even haunting narrative of the relationships between colonial explorers/scientists and their native collaborators that makes vivid the theme of 'colonial intimacy.' It speaks to scholars working on Chinese minorities and frontier relations, to historians of comparative colonialism, to experts on Tibet and Buddhism, and probably also simply to lovers of tales of mountains and exploration." –Charlotte Furth, Professor Emerita of Chinese History , University of Southern California.
The seventeenth century heralded a golden age of exploration, as intrepid travelers sailed around the world to gain firsthand knowledge of previously unknown continents. These explorers also collected the world’s most beautiful flora, and often their findings were recorded for posterity by talented professional artists. The Golden Age of Botanical Art tells the story of these exciting plant-hunting journeys and marries it with full-color reproductions of the stunning artwork they produced. Covering work through the nineteenth century, this lavishly illustrated book offers readers a look at 250 rare or unpublished images by some of the world’s most important botanical artists. Truly global in its scope, The Golden Age of Botanical Art features work by artists from Europe, China, and India, recording plants from places as disparate as Africa and South America. Martyn Rix has compiled the stories and art not only of well-known figures—such as Leonardo da Vinci and the artists of Empress Josephine Bonaparte—but also of those adventurous botanists and painters whose names and work have been forgotten. A celebration of both extraordinarily beautiful plant life and the globe-trotting men and women who found and recorded it, The Golden Age of Botanical Art will enchant gardeners and art lovers alike.
Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces once again in a further post-millennial meditation on the vexed relationship of psyche and place in a globalised world; Psycho Too brings together a second helping of their very best words and pictures from 'Psychogeography', the columns they contributed to the Independent for half a decade. The introduction, 'Journey Through Britain' is a new extended essay by Self, accompanied by Steadman's inimitable images. It tells of how Self journeyed to Dubai, that Götterdammerung of the contemporary built environment, in order to walk the length of the artificial Britain-shaped island, in the offshore luxury housing development known as 'The World'. Ranging from Istanbul to Los Angeles and from the crumbling coastline of East Yorkshire to the adamantine heads of Easter Island, Will Self's engaging and disturbing vision is once again perfectly counter-pointed by Ralph Steadman's edgy and dazzling artwork.
Former editor of Horticulture magazine covers over 100 species to fill any gardening situation. Over 125 illustrations.