An annotated list of English and American Victorian garden autobiographies
The range of books about gardening extends from the detailed and scientific garden encyclopedia to the tiny gilt-edged sentimental flower book of the Victorian period. And of all garden books, perhaps the most misunderstood type is what I call the garden autobiography. Simply, the garden autobiography is a book in which the author writes the life-story of his or her garden. Some of these garden autobiographies tell a great deal about how to garden, while others tell more of the author's personal life and thoughts. The garden autobiography first appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, and some Victorian garden autobiographies were among the most popular of garden titles in the late Victorian period. Alphonse Karr's Voyage Autour de Mon Jardin (1845) is an early and much admired example, which does not appear in this bibliography because it is French, though it was translated into English and was very popular in England. For a general introduction to these books, the reader is referred to my article, "The Garden Autobiography", in Garden History, 7 (Spring 1979), pp. 101-120.