Enfilade

Happy Bard Day!—on the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (died on 23 April 1616). Global programming details are available at Shakespeare400. From Penn Press:

Thomas A. Prendergast, Poetical Dust: Poets’ Corner and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0812247503 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0812291902 (ebook), $60 / £39.

In the South Transept of Westminster Abbey in London, the bodies of more than seventy men and women, primarily writers, poets, and playwrights, are interred, with many more memorialized. From the time of the reburial of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1556, the space has become a sanctuary where some of the most revered figures of English letters are celebrated and remembered. Poets’ Corner is now an attraction visited by thousands of tourists each year, but for much of its history it was also the staging ground for an ongoing debate on the nature of British cultural identity and the place of poetry in the larger political landscape.

Thomas Prendergast’s Poetical Dust offers a provocative, far-reaching, and witty analysis of Poets’ Corner. Covering nearly a thousand years of political and literary history, the book examines the chaotic, sometimes fitful process through which Britain has consecrated its poetry and poets. Whether exploring the several burials of Chaucer, the politicking of Alexander Pope, or the absence of William Shakespeare, Prendergast asks us to consider how these relics attest to the vexed, melancholy ties between the literary corpse and corpus. His thoughtful, sophisticated discussion reveals Poets’ Corner to be not simply a centuries-old destination for pilgrims and tourists alike but a monument to literary fame and the inevitable decay of the bodies it has both rejected and celebrated.

Thomas Prendergast is Professor of English at The College of Wooster and author of Chaucer’s Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus.

C  O N T E N T S

Preface

Introduction
1  Westminster Abbey and the Incorporation of Poets’ Corner
2  Melancholia, Monumental Resistance, and the Invention of Poets’ Corner
3  Love, Literary Publicity, and the Naming of Poets’ Corner
4  Absence and the Public Poetics of Regret
5  Poetic Exhumation and the Anxiety of Absence
Coda: Necromancy and the American Poets’ Corner

Poets’ Corner Graveplan
Poets’ Corner Alphabetical Burial and Monument List
Chronological List of Stones and Monuments in the South Transept

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

From Penn Press:

Bianca Maria Rinaldi, ed, Ideas of Chinese Gardens: Western Accounts, 1300–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-0812247633 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0812292084 (ebook), $90 / £58.50.

Europeans may be said to have first encountered the Chinese garden in Marco Polo’s narrative of his travels through the Mongol Empire and his years at the court of Kublai Khan. His account of a man-made lake abundant with fish, a verdant green hill lush with trees, raised walkways, and a plethora of beasts and birds took root in the European imagination as the description of a kind of Eden. Beginning in the sixteenth century, permanent interaction between Europe and China took form, and Jesuit missionaries and travelers recorded in letters and memoirs their admiration of Chinese gardens for their seeming naturalness. In the eighteenth century, European taste for chinoiserie reached its height, and informed observers of the Far East discovered that sophisticated and codified design principles lay behind the apparent simplicity of the Chinese garden. The widespread appreciation of the eighteenth century gave way to rejection in the nineteenth, a result of tensions over practical concerns such as trade imbalances and symbolized by the destruction of the imperial park of Yuanming yuan by a joint Anglo-French military expedition.

In Ideas of Chinese Gardens, Bianca Maria Rinaldi has gathered an unparalleled collection of westerners’ accounts, many freshly translated and all expertly annotated, as well as images that would have accompanied the texts as they circulated in Europe. Representing a great diversity of materials and literary genres, Rinaldi’s book includes more than thirty-five sources that span centuries, countries, languages, occupational biases, and political aims. By providing unmediated firsthand accounts of the testimony of these travelers and expatriates, Rinaldi illustrates how the Chinese garden was progressively lifted out of the realm of fantasy into something that could be compared with, and have an impact on, European traditions.

Bianca Maria Rinaldi is Associate Professor of landscape architecture at the Polytechnic University of Turin.

From Boydell & Brewer:

Michael Symes, Observations on Modern Gardening by Thomas Whately: An Eighteenth-Century Study of the English Landscape Garden (Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2016), 261 pages, ISBN: 978-1783271023, $56.

Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) is the first and most comprehensive study of what has come to be known as the English landscape garden, often claimed to be this country’s greatest original contribution to the fine arts. It became the standard text on the subject; its authority was accepted at home and abroad, and the book was read widely across Europe, mainly in a French translation. It influenced taste and design; taught visitors how to respond to gardens; analysed natural and built elements of the garden; suggested principles of design; and provided descriptions of major gardens of the day, such as those at Blenheim and Piercefield (Monmouthshire), together with the author’s responses, aesthetic, mental and emotional. It indicates a taste for the natural and the ‘picturesque’, foreshadowing romanticism. This first modern edition of the text is accompanied by an introduction and full commentary, covering both general considerations and specific points and topics. Contemporary illustrations have been chosen to illuminate further the gardens and places discussed.

Michael Symes is an author, lecturer and garden historian. He founded the MA in Garden History at Birkbeck, University of London, and specialises in eighteenth-century gardens in Britain and on the continent.

C O N T E N T S

1  Introduction
2  Observations on Modern Gardening by Thomas Whately
3  Latapie and Whately
4  Commentary

Further Reading
Index of Place Names

From Bloomsbury:

Jacqueline Riding, Jacobites: A New History of the ’45 Rebellion (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 608 pages, ISBN: 978-1608198047, £25.

The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745–46 is one of the most important turning points in British history–in terms of national crisis every bit the equal of 1066 and 1940. The tale of Charles Edward Stuart, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, and his heroic attempt to regain his grandfather’s (James II) crown remains the stuff of legend: the hunted fugitive, Flora MacDonald, and the dramatic escape over the sea to the Isle of Skye. But the full story—the real history—is even more dramatic, captivating, and revelatory.

Much more than a single rebellion, the events of 1745 were part of an ongoing civil war that threatened to destabilize the British nation and its empire. The Bonnie Prince and his army alone, which included a large contingent of Scottish highlanders, could not have posed a great threat. But with the involvement of Britain’s perennial enemy, Catholic France, it was a far more dangerous and potentially catastrophic situation for the British crown. With encouragement and support from Louis XV, Charles’s triumphant Jacobite army advanced all the way to Derby, a mere 120 miles from London, before a series of missteps ultimately doomed the rebellion to crushing defeat and annihilation at Culloden in April 1746—the last battle ever fought on British soil. Jacqueline Riding conveys the full weight of these monumental years of English and Scottish history as the future course of Great Britain as a united nation was irreversibly altered.

Dr Jacqueline Riding specialises in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British history and art. She read History and Art History at the universities of Leicester, London and York, and has over twenty-five years’ experience working as a curator and consultant within a broad range of museums, galleries and historic buildings, including the Guards Museum, Tate Britain and Historic Royal Palaces. From 1993 to 1999 she was Assistant Curator at the Palace of Westminster and later founding Director of the Handel House Museum, London. Her publications include Houses of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture (2000). She was the consultant historian and art historian on Mike Leigh’s award-winning Mr. Turner (2014) and is the consultant historian on his next feature film, Peterloo. Jacqueline Riding is an Associate Research Fellow in the School of Arts, Birkbeck College, University of London and lives in South London.

John Carter, View of the Library at Strawberry Hill, watercolour, 23.7 × 28.8 cm, from Horace Walpole, A Description of the Villa … at Strawberry-Hill (Strawberry Hill, 1784). The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

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The 100 Most Important Books for Understanding British Art, 1600–1850
Nominations due by 1 June 2016

As a cooperative initiative with Choice Magazine, the Historians of British Art (HBA) is working to assemble a list of the most important books for understanding British art produced between 1600 and 1850. The project, which will result in a bibliographic review essay for Choice, is particularly aimed at strengthening library holdings, and so nominations of studies broad in scope or significance are especially encouraged. In addition to studies of paintings, sculpture, and print culture, scholarship addressing country houses, gardens, decorative arts, patronage, and the history of exhibitions and collections for the period are welcome. Exhibition catalogues, historiographical studies, and works that situate British art within international contexts are also welcome. Books published within the past 10–20 years will anchor the final list, but nominations of titles from any period are eligible. Self-nominations are entirely appropriate. Don’t be shy. Nominate early and often!

Nominations may be submitted at the HBA website or emailed directly to HBA president, Craig Hanson, Top100BritishArtBooks@gmail.com. Nominations due by June 1.

From Artbooks.com:

Esther Alegre Carvajal and Consuelo Gómez López, Ordenes y espacio: sistemas de expresion de la arquitectura moderna, siglos XV–XVIII (Madrid: UNED, 2016), 311 pages, ISBN: 978-8436269970, 30€ / $58.

Un recorrido por la arquitectura y el urbanismo europeos de la Edad Moderna nos muestra un lenguaje arquitectónico vinculado al Clasicismo, que con la articulación de los órdenes clásicos, sus normas y sus proporciones crea espacios arquitectónicos y urbanos para los usos culturales, ideológicos y políticos del momento. Con este encuadre es necesario centrarse en el estudio del lenguaje de los órdenes arquitectónicos y los debates teóricos que surgieron durante los siglos XV al XVIII; el proceso de configuración formal y simbólico del espacio arquitectónico y su interpretación historiográfica; la creación de tipologías arquitectónicas, la relación entre el edificio y su espacio urbano; cómo influyeron las fuentes impresas y su circulación en la configuración de tipologías y modelos espaciales, o la recepción y aplicación que tuvo el Clasicismo como un sistema arquitectónico válido en los diferentes territorios europeos.

From Artbooks.com:

Leonarda Di Cosmo and Lorenzo Fatticcioni, Elegantiores statuae antiquae: Parole e immagini per una fruizione ‘turistica’ dell’Antico nella Roma del Settecento (Rome: Bentivoglio, 2016), 350 pages, ISBN: 978-8898158553, 40€ / $70.

Legato al genere degli ‘atlanti’ statuari, il volumetto Elegantiores statuae antiquae in variis romanorum palatiis asservatae di Dominique Magnan (1731–1796), offrendo una selezione aggiornata delle più apprezzate statue antiche, si connota come uno dei numerosi canali di divulgazione della cultura antiquaria operativi nel secondo Settecento. Organizzando il testo secondo strategie comunicative mutuate dalle più aggiornate ‘guide di Roma’ e coniugando nell’apparato iconografico le immagini di consolidate e nuovissime eccellenze statuarie, Magnan realizza un prodotto editoriale nuovo e di sicuro impatto commerciale. Configurate dunque come un’antologia del ‘più bello’ delle collezioni romane di antichità e quasi anticipando le rubriche ‘da non perdere’ o ‘vale il viaggio’ delle guide turistiche a noi contemporanee, le Elegantiores si proponevano come un agile prontuario che poteva essere acquistato ad accompagnamento di altri prodotti dell’ ‘industria’ culturale basata sull’Antico.

Leonarda Di Cosmo e Lorenzo Fatticcioni, studiosi di Storia dell’Archeologia Classica, svolgono la loro attività di ricerca presso la Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Si occupano in particolare di antiquaria e di ‘fortuna dell’Antico’, di Storia del Collezionismo e, in parallelo, di Metodologie Informatiche applicate ai Beni Culturali. In quest’ultimo settore si dedicano alla progettazione di banche dati per la gestione di fonti storico-artistiche e documentarie e di siti web per la Museologia e la Comunicazione del Patrimonio Culturale. Hanno coordinato, tra l’altro, i progetti Monumenta Rariora. Metamorfosi dell’Antico, sulla fortuna della statuaria antica in età moderna e Arretinum Museum, sulla storia del collezionismo di antichità in territorio aretino. Tra le loro pubblicazioni più recenti si segnalano i volumi Le componenti del classicismo secentesco: Lo statuto della scultura antica e Le regole della bellezza: Saperi antiquari e teorie dell’arte nei ‘Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum’ di François Perrier.

From Brill:

George Carhart, Frederick de Wit and the First Concise Reference Atlas (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 600 pages, ISBN: 978-9004299030, 125€ / $162.

This book is about the life and work of Frederick de Wit (1629–1706), one of the most famous dealers of maps, prints and art during the Dutch Golden Age, and his contribution to the dissemination of the knowledge of cartography. The Amsterdam firm of Frederick de Wit operated under the name ‘De Witte Pascaert’ (‘The White Chart’) from 1654 to 1710. It offered all kinds of printing and was one of the most successful publishers of maps and prints in the second half of the seventeenth century. The description of De Wit’s life and work is followed by an in-depth analysis and dating of the atlases and maps issued under his name.

After a career in yacht, boat, and historic building restoration and a stint in the army, George Carhart began his second career in academia with a BA in history from the University of Southern Maine. The history of cartography has been a central point of his interests. After receiving his BA in 1998 he joined the staff at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, working there as the assistant curator. After leaving the Osher Map Library in 2006 to complete his doctoral work, he has continued to research, publish, and teach in the field of cartographic history. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Passau in 2011, he has worked on projects at several universities including Dresden University of Technology and Trinity College Dublin.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1  Frederick de Wit’s Biography and His Business
2  The First Modern World Atlas
3  Frederick de Wit’s New Concise Reference Atlas
4  Today’s Bibliographic Methods Collide with Printing and Publishing Methods of the Early Modern World, 1577–1800
5  Dating De Wit’s Maps and Atlases
6  De Wit’s Legacy
7  The Cartographic Origins of De Wit’s Maps
8  Conclusion

Overview of the atlases published by De Wit
Cartobibliography of maps in De Wit’s atlases
List of consulted libraries
Acknowledgement of the illustrations

A fully detailed table of contents is available here»