Women, Literature, and the Arts of the Countryside in Early Twentieth-Century England

Judith W. Page is Professor of English and Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Emerita, University of Florida. In addition to numerous articles, she has published Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women (University of California, 1994), Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Literature and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora (with Elise Smith, Cambridge, 2011), and 'Disciples of Flora': Gardens in History and Culture (co-edited with Victoria Pagan and Brigitte Weltman-Aron, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). Elise L. Smith is Professor of Art History and Sanderson Chair in Arts and Sciences at Millsaps College, Mississippi. In addition to numerous articles on art-historical topics, she has published The Paintings of Lucas van Leyden (University of Missouri, 1992), Evelyn De Morgan and the Allegorical Body (Fairleigh Dickinson, 2002), and Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England's Disciples of Flora (with Judith Page; Cambridge, 2011).

Part I. Transforming Lives: Gardening Education, Environmental Activism, and the Professional Woman: 1. Frances Garnet Wolseley and the Rise of the Professional Woman Gardener; 2. Realism and Romance: Beatrix Potter's Natural Worlds; Part II. The Transformation of the Countryside: 3. 'Planted . . . in the Right Soil': Finding a Home in Two Novels by Edith Nesbit; 4. To Every Field There is a History: Flora Thompson's English Countryside; Part III. The Arts and Crafts of the Garden: 5. 'A Rising Stream of Life': Nature as Ground and Spirit in the Art of Mary Watts; 6. Dora Carrington's 'Phantom' Geography and the 'Crisis' of her Landscapes; Part IV. Redeeming the Waste Land: Dislocation, Loss, and Ruin: 7. 'The Garden Abides': Marion Cran and Wartime Memoirs of Life in the Garden; 8. Castle and Rose: Vita-Sackville West and the Redemption of Sissinghurst; Epilogue.