The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820 (The MIT Press) - Softcover

"A significant contribution to the subject of garden history. The introduction is one of the finest summaries of that 200-year period of garden history that is currently available" A. Nelson , Landscape Architecture (review of the first edition) "For each extract, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Willis have provided a witty and instructive introduction, as well as a general introduction that is a masterpiece of elegant compactness." Anatole Broyard , The New York Times (review of the first edition)

A garden classic, The Genius of the Place reveals that the history of landscape gardening is much more than a history of design and style; it opens up a wide perspective of English cultural history, showing how landscape gardening was gradually transformed over two centuries into an art that has been widely imitated throughout Europe and North America. The English landscape garden is richly documented in this anthology. Over 100 illustrations accompany writings that range from Francis Bacon to Jane Austin; from the early 1600s, when Englishmen began to determine their own concept and form of the garden, through the first half of the eighteenth century when its distinctive feature emerged, to the heyday of the landscape garden under "Capability" Brown and the reactions to his pure formalism under Repton and Loudon in the 1800s. This edition contains a new introduction and bibliography covering the many developments in garden history during the last dozen years.