Description
A richly illustrated exploration of how late Georgian gardens associated with medical practitioners advanced science, education, and agricultural experimentation
As Britain grew into an ever-expanding empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new and exotic botanical specimens began to arrive within the nation's public and private spaces. Gardens became sites not just of leisure, sport, and aesthetic enjoyment, but also of scientific inquiry and knowledge dissemination. Medical practitioners used their botanical training to capitalize on the growing fashion for botanical collecting and agricultural experimentation in institutional, semipublic, and private gardens across Britain. This book highlights the role of these medical practitioners in the changing use of gardens in the late Georgian period, marked by a fluidity among the ideas of farm, laboratory, museum, and garden. Placing these activities within a wider framework of fashionable, scientific, and economic interests of the time, historian Clare Hickman argues that gardens shifted from predominately static places of enjoyment to key gathering places for improvement, knowledge sharing, and scientific exploration.
About the Author
Clare Hickman is a senior lecturer in history at Newcastle University. She lives in Whitley Bay, United Kingdom.
Reviews
"In her stimulating and original study, Hickman turns away from the traditional focus of garden history-great aristocratic and royal estates-to consider more modest gardens, mostly situated on the periphery of London. . . . In reconstructing and animating landscapes, now mostly buried under city streets, Hickman has recovered a lost world of medical gardens."-Kate Teltscher, Spectator
"Hickman has done a remarkable job of working on gardens that have long disappeared and are often not very well documented. . . . A welcome renewal to the field of garden studies."-Elena Romero-Passerin, Journal of Modern History
"The author conducts [an] orchestra of varied talents with skill, balancing tales of botanic gardens in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the ever-welcome social observations of Mrs Delany. . . . Much of the pleasure is derived from brief anecdotes conjuring up insights into a society of progressively minded gentlemen who took every opportunity to improve the state of human knowledge and morality."-Steven Desmond, Country Life
"Hickman shows us, in her accessible and enjoyable style, how plants were relevant to more than just the elite and how their cultivation shaped medicine and transformed social relationships. This book offers a timely and welcome insight into a little discussed but significant aspect of garden history."-Suzanne Moss MCIHort, The Horticulturist
"[Hickman's] astute analysis is leavened with delightful details and fascinating social history. . . . Hickman is also quick to acknowledge the hidden histories, both at home and abroad, on which the late Georgian garden was built."-Katie Campbell, Hortus
"Despite the difficulties of changing landscapes and locations of collections, Hickman proves that scholars can study historical gardens in a meaningful way. Furthermore, the questions raised by this book will only benefit the study of the history of British medicine."-Charlotte Holmes, British Journal of History of Science
"The Doctor's Garden would be a particularly worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in the intersection between the history of medicine and the history of gardens. While its intersection of medicine and botany primarily situates it within the history of science, its interdisciplinary nature also places it within the context of sensory studies."-India Cole, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
"An original and beautifully produced book. . . . Innovative and exciting, and always informed by astute readings of a wide range of source material."-Mark Nesbitt, Pharmaceutical Historian
Winner of the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize, sponsored by the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the UVA School of Architecture
"This book is a very original and accomplished work of garden history, exploring the British eighteenth-century doctor's garden as an important and neglected site of knowledge creation and dissemination."-Jonathan Reinarz, author of Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell
"This beautifully written book illuminates our understanding of gardens as centers of medical teaching and research, as sources of experimentation, as places of sociability, and as productive spaces."-James Beattie, coeditor of the Routledge Research on Gardens in History series, and chair, Garden History Research Foundation
"In this innovative, impressive book Clare Hickman eschews the traditional focus on the grounds of the landed rich, casting a mass of new light on a rather different range of eighteenth-century gardens. Readable, thought-provoking, and extraordinarily well-researched."-Tom Williamson, author of Humphry Repton: Landscape Design in an Age of Revolution
"Gardens linked British medical practitioners to a world of science, knowledge, travel, literature, and collecting. In The Doctor's Garden, Clare Hickman cultivates a visionary landscape history of medicine."-Annmarie Adams, author of Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943
"Clare Hickman uncovers a vibrant network of medical gardeners. Their plantings, temples, and observatories may have vanished, but their ethos of enquiry can still inspire."-Alexandra Harris, author of Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies
Book Information
ISBN 9780300236101
Author Clare Hickman
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 156mm * 25mm
As Britain grew into an ever-expanding empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new and exotic botanical specimens began to arrive within the nation's public and private spaces. Gardens became sites not just of leisure, sport, and aesthetic enjoyment, but also of scientific inquiry and knowledge dissemination. Medical practitioners used their botanical training to capitalize on the growing fashion for botanical collecting and agricultural experimentation in institutional, semipublic, and private gardens across Britain. This book highlights the role of these medical practitioners in the changing use of gardens in the late Georgian period, marked by a fluidity among the ideas of farm, laboratory, museum, and garden. Placing these activities within a wider framework of fashionable, scientific, and economic interests of the time, historian Clare Hickman argues that gardens shifted from predominately static places of enjoyment to key gathering places for improvement, knowledge sharing, and scientific exploration.
About the Author
Clare Hickman is a senior lecturer in history at Newcastle University. She lives in Whitley Bay, United Kingdom.
Reviews
"In her stimulating and original study, Hickman turns away from the traditional focus of garden history-great aristocratic and royal estates-to consider more modest gardens, mostly situated on the periphery of London. . . . In reconstructing and animating landscapes, now mostly buried under city streets, Hickman has recovered a lost world of medical gardens."-Kate Teltscher, Spectator
"Hickman has done a remarkable job of working on gardens that have long disappeared and are often not very well documented. . . . A welcome renewal to the field of garden studies."-Elena Romero-Passerin, Journal of Modern History
"The author conducts [an] orchestra of varied talents with skill, balancing tales of botanic gardens in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the ever-welcome social observations of Mrs Delany. . . . Much of the pleasure is derived from brief anecdotes conjuring up insights into a society of progressively minded gentlemen who took every opportunity to improve the state of human knowledge and morality."-Steven Desmond, Country Life
"Hickman shows us, in her accessible and enjoyable style, how plants were relevant to more than just the elite and how their cultivation shaped medicine and transformed social relationships. This book offers a timely and welcome insight into a little discussed but significant aspect of garden history."-Suzanne Moss MCIHort, The Horticulturist
"[Hickman's] astute analysis is leavened with delightful details and fascinating social history. . . . Hickman is also quick to acknowledge the hidden histories, both at home and abroad, on which the late Georgian garden was built."-Katie Campbell, Hortus
"Despite the difficulties of changing landscapes and locations of collections, Hickman proves that scholars can study historical gardens in a meaningful way. Furthermore, the questions raised by this book will only benefit the study of the history of British medicine."-Charlotte Holmes, British Journal of History of Science
"The Doctor's Garden would be a particularly worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in the intersection between the history of medicine and the history of gardens. While its intersection of medicine and botany primarily situates it within the history of science, its interdisciplinary nature also places it within the context of sensory studies."-India Cole, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
"An original and beautifully produced book. . . . Innovative and exciting, and always informed by astute readings of a wide range of source material."-Mark Nesbitt, Pharmaceutical Historian
Winner of the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize, sponsored by the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the UVA School of Architecture
"This book is a very original and accomplished work of garden history, exploring the British eighteenth-century doctor's garden as an important and neglected site of knowledge creation and dissemination."-Jonathan Reinarz, author of Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell
"This beautifully written book illuminates our understanding of gardens as centers of medical teaching and research, as sources of experimentation, as places of sociability, and as productive spaces."-James Beattie, coeditor of the Routledge Research on Gardens in History series, and chair, Garden History Research Foundation
"In this innovative, impressive book Clare Hickman eschews the traditional focus on the grounds of the landed rich, casting a mass of new light on a rather different range of eighteenth-century gardens. Readable, thought-provoking, and extraordinarily well-researched."-Tom Williamson, author of Humphry Repton: Landscape Design in an Age of Revolution
"Gardens linked British medical practitioners to a world of science, knowledge, travel, literature, and collecting. In The Doctor's Garden, Clare Hickman cultivates a visionary landscape history of medicine."-Annmarie Adams, author of Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943
"Clare Hickman uncovers a vibrant network of medical gardeners. Their plantings, temples, and observatories may have vanished, but their ethos of enquiry can still inspire."-Alexandra Harris, author of Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies
Book Information
ISBN 9780300236101
Author Clare Hickman
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 156mm * 25mm
