The Paper Garden
Molly Peacock
British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction longlist 2011
'Molly Peacock has created metaphors and parallels at every opportunity in this biography of an extraordinary ... The writing is always rich (Peacock is a poet, and this is evident throughout) and the author has broader concerns than straight biography especially with the connections between creativity and life.This lovely hardback with its glossy illustrations gives a sense of Delany's artistic achievements.'
Lorien Kaye (The Age)'The Paper Garden is a blessed relief from the humdrum, a bright feather in a peacock's tail.'
Nicola Walker (The Sydney Morning Herald )'The Paper Garden is a lusciously presented book, replete with glossy reproductions of Delany's collages, and Peacock's prose is as precise, delicate and absorbing as the illustrations.'
Terry Oberq (Courier Mail )A beautifully written tour de force from an internationally acclaimed poet, The Paper Garden is at once a biography of an extraordinary eighteenth-century woman and a fascinating meditation on late-life creativity.
Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700–1788) was the witty, beautiful, and talented daughter of a minor branch of a powerful family. Married off at seventeen to a sixty-one-year-old drunken squire to improve the family fortunes, then widowed by twenty-five, she would spurn many suitors over the next twenty years, including the charismatic Lord Baltimore, and she would also refuse to retire to a quiet, pensioned existence. Instead, she cultivated a wide circle of friends, including Handel and Jonathan Swift. And she painted, she stitched, she observed, as she swirled in the outskirts of the Georgian court. In mid-life, she finally found love, and married again.
Upon her second husband’s death twenty-three years later, she arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors and, at the age of seventy-two, created a new art form, mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany created an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica.
Delicately, Molly Peacock has woven parallels in her own life around the story of Mrs. Delany’s and, in doing so, has made this biography into a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art.
Gorgeously designed and featuring thirty-five full-colour illustrations, this is a sumptuous and lively book full of fashion and friendships, gossip and politics, letters and love. It’s to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.
'The Paper Garden tells an interesting story and is so beautifully produced ... that it should find a treasured place on many a bookshelf.'
Margaret Quigley (Dominion Post Weekend)'This lyrical work is as much a biography of an 18thcentury woman as it is a contemplation on creativity and art. The story of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788) makes for fascinating reading, but it is her life's work, which she discovered at the age of 72, that makes the tale extraordinary.'
Sue Hewitt (Sunday Herald Sun)'This beautiful and most unusual book is subtitled "Mrs Delaney begins her life's work at 72". I have to confess that I had never heard of Mary Delaney but I have found her life and her artistic achievement to be remarkable.'
Robert Willson (Canberra Times)'A fascinating meditation on life, love and creativity'
Fiona Stager (Sunday Mail)'Whatever the subject, rich music follows the tap of Molly Peacock's baton.'
(Washington Post)'This intriguing portrait of a woman who was well ahead of her time is a book to savour. Not only is it beautifully presented, with fullcolour illustrations, but the prose also highlights the writing skills of Canadian poet Molly Peacock. For the book lover in your family or friends who like to pore over a book and relish it, this is the book to buy.'
Dale Harcombe (Good Reading)'This wonderful book chronicles her [Mary Ganville's] astounding life and ties it all together with some of those wondrous flowers.'
Nina Valentine (Ballarat Courier)'Peacock ... writes vividly, sensitively, poetically.'
(Publishers Weekly)'Peacock has structured the whole book as metaphor, a collage about collage, and a meditation on sexuality, friendship and creativity. It both analyzes and exemplifies that obsessional, mesmerized state induced in artists and crafts people through concentration and close observation. The volume itself is a craft object, sumptuously presented and designed, on fine paper, with colophons and decorations, and full-page colour reproductions so that we can test Peacock’s responses against our own.'
Victoria Glendinning (The Globe & Mail )'The Paper Garden is a fascinating, uplifting and beautiful book.'
Claire Holden Rothman (The Vancouver Sun)It is a captivating combination and one which will intrigue readers interested in history, painting and craftsmanship ... The Paper Garden is a lovely book, clever, artfully contrived, wonderfully illustrated and full of surprises.'
(The London Free Press)Molly Peacock
Author photo
Andrew Tolson
Molly Peacock is the award-winning author of six volumes of poetry, including, most recently, The Second Blush. Her poems have appeared in such leading publications as The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Among her other works are How to Read a Poem ... and Start a Poetry Circle and a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece. Peacock is the Series Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English and a member of the Graduate Faculty of the Spalding University Brief Residency MFA Program. She lives in Toronto.
Website: http://www.peacockpapergarden.com/
Buy from Readings
Extent: 416pp Full colour
Size: 203mm x 127mm
ISBN (13): 9781921640797
RRP: $39.95
Pub date: October 2010
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