Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England

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ISBN-10:: 1558493794
ISBN-13:: 9781558493797
Pub. Date:: 01/03/2003
Publisher:: University of Massachusetts Press

ISBN-10:: 1558493794
ISBN-13:: 9781558493797
Pub. Date:: 01/03/2003
Publisher:: University of Massachusetts Press

Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England

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Overview

This handsome reprinted edition of landscape architect Olmsted's record of his 1850 walking tour through England and Wales contains an introduction and annotation by Charles C. McLaughlin (emeritus, history, American U.), a specialist on Olmsted. In his introduction, McLaughlin details Olmsted's travel in England and the influence of its parks, geography, and views on his landscape design, including his design of Central Park. Though the book will be of interest to scholars of Olmsted and American park design, the account will capture the imagination of anyone interested in 19th-century travel and England. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558493797
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	01/03/2003
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 2.10(d)

	Preface to the Reprint Edition	ix
	List of Donors	xiii
	Acknowledgments	xv
	Introduction to the Reprint Edition	xix
	Notes to the Introduction	lvii
	Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England	1
Volume 17
Volume 2247
	A Pilgrimage (from the 1859 edition)	431
	Appendix A	435
	Appendix B	447
	Appendix C	449
	Appendix D	457
	Editor's Notes	463
	Index	515

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In 1863, at the peak of the Civil War, a package turned up on President Lincoln's desk containing stereoscopic images of the municipal wonder taking shape up in New York: Central Park. These high-tech photographic scenes were intended to soothe the President's nerves, just as the Park has calmed New Yorkers for generations. This summer is the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the state's wise decision-influenced by the pre?minent nineteenth-century landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing-to set aside a giant chunk of swampy Manhattan ground for the creation of the first major landscaped public park in the United States. Central Park, An American Masterpiece, by Sara Cedar Miller, the Park's official historian, is itself a welcoming oasis, teeming with photographs of lush meadows, rustic pergolas, whimsical bridges, and Catskills-inspired ravines. The Park's eight hundred and forty-three acres, we learn, are easily discernible by shuttle astronauts; its sunken transverse roads were the prototype for the modern highway system; and its Great Lawn, originally a reservoir, was filled in with rubble from the Rockefeller Center construction site. The park we know today-featuring Balto the sled dog, Cleopatra's Needle, and Wollman Rink-descends from design entry No. 33, the famous "Greensward" plan of architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The University of Massachusetts Press has reprinted Walks and Talks of An American Farmer in England, Olmsted's engaging account of his 1850 ramble around England and Wales, including his fateful encounter with Birkenhead Park, near Liverpool. "This magnificent pleasure-ground," Olmsted wrote, "is entirely, unreservedly, and for ever the people's own.
( Mark Rozzo)

The New Yorker

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