Onward and upward in the garden

ISBN: 0374226547

Author: White, Katharine Sergeant Angell

Condition: Used

Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979 Hardcover with dust jacket. Edited and Introduction by E. B. White. Fifth printing. (ISBN 0-374-22654-7) Jacket painting by Moritz Michael Daffinger. Good tight copy, edges slightly soiled, good jacket. Katherine S. White began working at "The New Yorker" in 1925, the year of is founding and was editor there for thirty-four years. Throughout and beyond those years she was also a gardener: as E.B. White remarks in his introduction, "She simply accepted the act of gardening as the natural thing to be occupied with in one's spare time, no matter where one was, or how deeply involved in other affairs." In 1958, when her job as editor was coming to a close, Mrs. White wrote the first of a series of fourteen gardening pieces that appeared in 'The New Yorker" over the next twelve years. Entitled "Onward and Upward in the Garden," that opening piece was undoubtedly the first critical review of garden catalogues. "In addition to the surprising thousands of 'New Yorker' readers and dozens of seedsmen. writes White, "Katherine managed to startle a third party - me, her husband." He speculates that "the thing that started her off was her discovery that the catalogue makers were, in fact, writers...She stumbled on a whole new flock of creative people, handy substitutes for the O'Hara's, the Nabokovs, the Staffords of her professional life." As well as commenting unabashedly on W. Atlee Burpee, Joseph Harris, and the more specialized seed companies, Mrs. White shares her own strong views on the flower forms that are most pleasing ("To me a ruffled petunia is occasionally a delight, but a ruffled snapdragon is an abomination") Nature, gardening, biography.

• Garden Writing