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The Tulip (Paperback)

by Anna Pavord (Author)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

The Tulip + The Naming of Names: the Search for Order in the World of Plants + Bulb: A Hand-Picked Selection of the World's Most Beautiful Bulbs
Price For All Three: £43.95

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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; New edition edition (17 April 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0747546215
  • ISBN-13: 978-0747546214
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.7 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 21,020 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #14 in  Books > Home & Garden > Gardening > Plants > Flowers
    #24 in  Books > Business, Finance & Law > Economics > History
    #28 in  Books > Business, Finance & Law > Biographies & Histories > Business & Economic History

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than six million pounds in today's money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anne Pavord's wonderful book on this most seductive of flowers.

Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, as she scrambles across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip, whose discovery leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful yet enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the tulip, from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul, including the downfall of Ahmed III in 1730, so indulgent was his desire for the flower, to the present cultivation of the flower by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way incredible stories of people's investment in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of the unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colours are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant, but produces its gorgeous colours. The Tulipomania which gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colours imaginable. The Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects; buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again! --Jerry Brotton



Product Description

"The Tulip" is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish and devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip into the world-wide phenomenon it is today. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Pavord tells how the tulip arrived from Turkey and took the whole of Western Europe by storm. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, this beautifully produced and irresistible volume will become a bible, a unique source book, a universal gift book and a joy to all who possess it.
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Tulip
82% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Nice plates, shame about the text, 11 Jan 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Tulip (Hardcover)
One of the most beautiful books I have ever handled. Gorgeous illustrations, carefully - even lovingly - chosen. But the accompanying text was repetitive, self-indulgent and dull, dull, dull. Deserves to be a coffee table book.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Strong on horticulture - weak on history, 10 May 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Tulip (Hardcover)
As both a keen gardener and an historian, I found this both a fascinating and an infuriating book. There is no doubt that Anna Pavord is an authority on the botany and the history of the tulip, and she has done a magnificent job in researching the whole story of the flower, bringing in information from a wide variety of sources.

But when Pavord strays outside the realms of horticultural history she displays an alarming lack of knowledge. It is, for example, woefully simplistic to state that Sultan Ahmed III forfeited his throne through his love of tulips; many political factors were far more important. Pavord misdates the vital first encounter with the flower by Ambassador Busbecq (which we're led to believ was one of the most important incidents in the whole history of the tulip) by four years. And she makes only the most cursory attempt to sketch in the historical background, whether it be in the Ottoman Empire, the United Provinces or England. In summary, this is a fine book for garden lovers, but one serious historians will find jejeune.

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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Leaden product of obsession, 30 Jun 2000
By A Customer
...to readsome of the early reviews you'd have thought the author had writtenthe Bible, not this leadenly-paced and excessively-detailed tombstone, which nine times out of ten fails to do true justice to the most wonderful of flowers. Pavord needs to realise that the first rule of writing this sort of history is to tell a story - not to regurgitate everything you've ever learned about the subject. It is this lack of discrimination that turns what should have been a fascinating book into a trudge. The story only really comes alive with its discussion of the famous Dutch tulip mania, and even here the author fails to ask and answer the most obvious of questions - why did the mania develop as it did? Yes, there is plenty of interesting information here and yes, Anna Pavord has made it accessible to everyone by writing this book, but what a joy it could and should have been to read. And where the sumptuous - if over-priced - hardcover does offer a dazzling array of contemporary illustrations, the paperback loses out because it comes with only a few skimpy photo sections.

I'm sorry to sound so jaundiced. If I'd discovered this book for myself I'd probably have found it mildly interesting and written at least a lukewarm review. But the hype that has surrounded The Tulip from the moment of publication baffles and irritates me.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing
I can't quite believe the other reviews. This book is a joy to handle and to read. Its so clearly a work of passion on a subject we would never know about if it wasn't for the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Rebus

2.0 out of 5 stars In bad need of pruning
There's some interesting stuff in here, but for the non-gardener, it's far too long, very repetitive and concentrates far too much on arcane details. Read more
Published 14 months ago by G. Brooks

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing
After all the hype I was really disappointed with this book. Pavord is obsessed with the tulip - not necessarily a bad thing, you might think, but it is when it means there is no... Read more
Published on 26 April 1999

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