Humphry Repton

This is the most considered account to date of Humphry Repton's principles, or 'system, ' of landscape gardening. It draws on the mass of material that Williamson has collected himself in his numerous countywide surveys, and also the publications of County Gardens Trusts in Repton's bicentenary year, all melded together with Williamson's many insights in his usual lively style. Repton's observations and hints on landscape design are of enduring interest, and anyone wishing to understand why this should be so would be advised to immerse themselves in this book. --David Jacques, garden and landscape historian, author of Landscape Appreciation: Theories since the Cultural Turn Repton's imagination of the English landscape was incomparable. He was its artist, sculptor, and designer. Williamson admirably charts the evolution of that imagination from the age of Capability Brown through to the aesthetic upheavals of the Regency, always setting it in the social and architectural context of the day. With England's landscape under unprecedented threat, so clear a championship of Repton's work is exceptionally valuable. --Sir Simon Jenkins, former chairman of the National Trust and author of England's Hundred Best Views This is an important book on Repton, and a tour de force in the social and economic analysis of garden design. Williamson has an unparalleled grasp of what's at stake in the making of gardens, and a keen sense of Repton's role in the reimagining of designed landscape. He combines meticulous scholarship with an eye for the telling detail, and his handling of the economics and aesthetics of gardening is unparalleled. Combined with an inspired account of Repton's friendships and influences, [Williamson's scholarship] offers us valuable insights into the gardening world that Repton both inhabited and made. --Stephen Bending, director of the Southampton Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of Southampton