Italian Villas and Their Gardens First Edition - Edith Wharton - Bauman Rare Books

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Italian Villas and Their Gardens

Edith WHARTON | Maxfield PARRISH

Item#: 105490 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Italian Villas and Their Gardens

“THE GARDENER’S PURPOSE, AND THE USES TO WHICH HE MEANT HIS GARDEN TO BE PUT”: WHARTON’S ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GARDENS, WITH WONDERFUL MAXFIELD PARRISH ILLUSTRATIONS

WHARTON, Edith. Italian Villas and Their Gardens. New York: Century, 1904. Quarto, original dark green pictorial cloth gilt, top edge gilt, uncut.

First edition, American issue (simultaneous with the English edition) of this famous treatise on “Italian garden-magic,” with 45 full-page plates, including 26 illustrations by Maxfield Parrish (15 in color), 19 black-and-white photographs, and seven in-text illustrations.

Although Wharton is best remembered today as a novelist, her contemporaries knew her also as a perceptive essayist on what today might be termed "design." Indeed, her first book was not a novel but the influential Decoration of Houses, which advocated turning away from the Victorian love of ornament for ornament's sake and a "return to architectural principals." Similarly, in Italian Villas and Their Gardens she praises the Italian garden for its lack of flowers and its focus instead on "three other factors in garden-composition-marble, water and perennial verdure" to create a sort of living architecture. By 1904 Maxfield Parrish was acknowledged as "one of America's most successful artists, achieving national popularity for his distinctively elegant style, detailed backgrounds and glowing colors" (Dalby, 42). The American and English issues were simultaneous. Garrison A10.1a. Contemporary gift inscription.

Text and plates fresh, light edge-wear, tiny bit of soiling to cloth, gilt bright. A near-fine copy.

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