![]() ![]() This is not a book to be read at one time. I found it to be a treasure! I did take my time reading it, I think this is the longest I have ever taken to finish a book! I chose to pick it up at different times of different seasons when my interest was inspired. I will admit this book is not for everyone and if you are not passionate about flowers and flower gardening or reading about a woman living in the 50's then just skip this book. I gave copies as Christmas gifts one year to every gardener on my list ! If you are like me you will find yourself rereading this book year after year as you to sit and look out of the window at the snow falling dreaming of your own garden glory.just like Katherine so many winters ago. ![]() The book is a fun and interesting ride for any gardener. White was an editor by trade and instinct and she approached the catalogs she reviewed with the same direction and verve, commenting on type face, syntax, editorial liberties as well as color selections the hybridizers made! It is a highly entertaining book-so much so it inspired me to go onto Ebay and begin collecting the catalogs she mentions to see for myself whether I agreed or not ! (In most cases I do). These article are her "reviews" of the gardening catalogs of the day, plus her thoughts and opionions on other gardening related topics. From these cataogs she made her seed and plant lists for the Spring and dreamed of garden glory. Katharine White, the wife of EB White and a famed editor in her own right, was a reader and collector of gardening catalogs which she poured over from her house in Maine during the snowy wintery housebound months in frozen Brookline. And undeniably resourceful.Īs a gardener myself, in addition to being an avid fan of The New Yorker, this collection of articles (first published in The New Yorker in the late 1950's) is a dream come true. She seemed to admire, or at least find "resourceful," the gardener of an English insane asylum who, in the age when horses pulled grass mowers, "harnessed seven madmen to his machine." Oh, hahahaha! HILARIOUS. ![]() Clearly this tendency was inherited from her father, who detested the American Beauty rose because he found them "a bit 'gross'" (too large and strongly colored). decided never to grow rhododendrons or azaleas, "thinking them too elegant for a Maine coast farm." Ookay. One year she grew dahlias the size of dinner plates, which was "embarrassing.the only word for them was vulgar." She and E.B. Nor did I cotton to her disdain for certain very large or showy flowers. Her writing style is what I consider fussy - "I shall" for "I will," and unnecessarily archaic - there is no reason, in 1966, to call them "motorcars." I can't say the personality that came through the writing was all that attractive. She's also writing in the 50s and 60s, so a lot of the cultivars she's talking about have probably gone the way of the dodo. Even for someone interested in seeds, botany, and yes, seed catalogs, like me, it's a bit much. White reviews them as if they were books. Now in this new edition, White can be read and appreciated anew.īe warned, most of this volume is ed catalogs. Intensely personal and charged with emotion, the essays remain timeless. Onward and Upward in the Garden is an essential book of enduring appeal for writers and gardeners in every generation. Katharine White had vast and varied interests in addition to gardening and she brought them all to bear in the writing of these remarkable essays. White in his introduction to the book, would be like insisting that Ben Franklin was simply a printer. But to think of Katharine White simply as a gardener, cautioned E. Whether White is discussing her favorite garden catalogs, her disdain for oversized flower hybrids, or the long rich history of gardening, she never fails to delight readers with her humor, lively criticism, and beautiful prose. White, assembled them into this now classic collection. The poet Marianne Moore originally persuaded White that these pieces would make a fine book, but it wasn't until after her death in 1977 that her husband, E. In 1958, when her job as editor was coming to a close, White wrote the first of a series of fourteen garden pieces that appeared in The New Yorker over the next twelve years. Throughout and beyond those years she was also a gardener. Katharine White began working at The New Yorker in 1925, the year of its founding, and was an editor there for thirty-four years, shaping the careers of such writers as John O'Hara, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jean Stafford. ![]()
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