- Hardcover: 416 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (4 July 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 140882101X
- ISBN-13: 978-1408821015
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.2 x 4.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
203,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #77 in Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Print & Decorative Arts > Mixed Media
- #100 in Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Women & Art
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Peacock has structured the whole book as metaphor, a collage about collage, and a meditation on sexuality, friendship and creativity. It both analyses and exemplifies that obsessional, mesmerised state induced in artists and crafts people through concentration and close observation. The volume itself is a craft object, sumptuously presented and designed ... The Paper Garden will be everyone's favourite Christmas present this year' Victoria Glendinning, Globe and Mail 'In this charming biography of her heroine, Peacock finds parallels between her own life and Mrs. Delany's that bring this text, and this person to life' Nancy Milford, author of Zelda 'Whatever the subject, rich music follows the tap of Molly Peacock's baton' Washington Post
Product Description
Mary Delany was seventy-two years old when she noticed a petal drop from a geranium. In a flash of inspiration, she picked up her scissors and cut out a paper replica of the petal, inventing the art of collage. It was the summer of 1772, in England. During the next ten years she completed nearly a thousand cut-paper botanicals (which she called mosaicks) so accurate that botanists still refer to them. Poet-biographer Molly Peacock uses close-ups of these brilliant collages in The Paper Garden to track the extraordinary life of Delany, friend of Swift, Handel, Hogarth, and even Queen Charlotte and King George III. How did this remarkable role model for late blooming manage it? After a disastrous teenage marriage to a drunken sixty-one-year-old squire, she took control of her own life, pursuing creative projects, spurning suitors and gaining friends. At forty-three, she married Jonathan Swift's friend Dr. Patrick Delany, and lived in Ireland in a true expression of midlife love. But after twenty-five years and a terrible lawsuit, her husband died. Sent into a netherland of mourning, Mrs Delany was rescued by her friend, the fabulously wealthy Duchess of Portland. The Duchess introduced Delany to the botanical adventurers of the day and a bonanza of exotic plants from Captain Cook's voyage, which became the inspiration for her art. Peacock herself first saw Mrs Delany's work more than twenty years before she wrote The Paper Garden, but 'like a book you know is too old for you', she put the thought of the old woman away. She went on to marry and cherish the happiness of her own midlife, in a parallel to Mrs. Delany, and by chance rediscovered the mosaicks decades later. This encounter confronted the poet with her own aging and gave her-and her readers-a blueprint for late-life flexibility, creativity, and change.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A biography with a difference; Molly Peacock inserts autobiographical references of her own, with which I was uncomfortable, and she also makes comparisons between the cut-paper mosaicks and Mary Delany's emotional state at the time she created them, equating thorns with personal pain, and so on. This conceit works rather better, as it is easier to imagine MD choosing to cut out the petals, stem and leaves of a rose, for example, when she was longing to stick something sharp into another's side!
Mary Delany is one of my favourite historical characters, her life almost spanning the 18th century, and managing in that time to meet many of the major players at Court and in artistic circles. She was a voluminous correspondent, and one who only found her major artistic stride after her second widowhood, and after the loss of her sister to whom she wrote very regularly. I thoroughly enjoyed this biography but think it would be improved without the personal references.
Mary Delany is one of my favourite historical characters, her life almost spanning the 18th century, and managing in that time to meet many of the major players at Court and in artistic circles. She was a voluminous correspondent, and one who only found her major artistic stride after her second widowhood, and after the loss of her sister to whom she wrote very regularly. I thoroughly enjoyed this biography but think it would be improved without the personal references.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was disappointed with this book. I found the merging and comparison of the author's experience with that of Mrs Delany awkward and contrived. However it does have some beautiful illustrations.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A beautifully produced book - elegant typefaces, quality paper, beautiful cover design - makes you realise that despite all the ipads and kindles, books will always have a place in our lives. Well written too, slightly tongue-in-cheek transatlantic style, but all the more readable for that. Such a pity it was printed in China, oh well, can't have everything I suppose. DM
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Paper Flower Power
The pictures in the book are second to none, and show what a talented, albeit "late bloomer" Mrs. Delany was. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. Robert W. Bleach
interesting reading
I have read other books about Mrs Delany but this is written from a different perspective as the author relates different aspects of her own life to Mrs Delany's. Read more
Published 10 months ago by kaiemay
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