The Garden

Limited first edition. Tall 8vo. Pp. 134, [1]. Decorated gilt buckram, printed on hand-made paper; top-edge gilt, others uncut. With a title-vignette, part-titles and tail-pieces illustrated by Broom Lynne. Sans the scarce plain, unprinted dustwrapper. No. 200 of 750 numbered copies, signed by the Author to verso of half-title. Published simultaneously with the trade issue.

Neat ownership signature to f.f.e.p., else Fine.

Winner of the 1946 Heinemann Prize. A long narrative poem, some of whose verses previously appeared in the pages of The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, The Observer, The New Statesman and Nation, The Listener, and Country Life. Divided into four seasonal sections, plus an introduction, this companion volume to her earlier The Land (1926), outlines Sackville-West's horticultural aesthetic as exemplified in her famed garden at Sissinghurst. Heralded for its beauty and diversity, the garden is the result of the creative tension between her husband's (Harold Nicolson's) formal design and the exuberant planting of the author.

In a 1950 House & Garden feature, Sackville-West neatly summed it up: "I think I have-succeeded in making the garden pretty with my flowers, but the real credit is due to him, who drew its lines so well and so firmly that it can still be regarded with pleasure even in the winter months when all my flowers have vanished away and the skeleton is revealed."

[Cross & Ravenscroft-Hulme A44a; Gretton, 41]