Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England

by Frederick Law Olmsted

Overview

Reprint of the original, first published in 1859.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783375143084
Publisher:	Salzwasser-Verlag
Publication date:	01/18/2023
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Charles C. McLaughlin is professor emeritus of history at the American University, Washington, D.C., and founding editor of The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted.

Table of Contents

	Preface to the Reprint Edition	ix
	List of Donors	xiii
	Acknowledgments	xv
	Introduction to the Reprint Edition	xix
	Notes to the Introduction	lvii
	Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England	1
Volume 17
Volume 2247
	A Pilgrimage (from the 1859 edition)	431
	Appendix A	435
	Appendix B	447
	Appendix C	449
	Appendix D	457
	Editor's Notes	463
	Index	515

What People are Saying About This

Witold Rybczynski

In this book we get not only a young American's vivid impressions of mid-nineteenth century England, but also the first glimmers of Frederick Law Olmsted the observant journalist and future landscape designer. Charles McLaughlin's erudite introduction usefully puts all this in the proper perspective.

Editorial Reviews

In 1863, at the peak of the Civil War, a package turned up on President Lincoln's desk containing stereoscopic images of the municipal wonder taking shape up in New York: Central Park. These high-tech photographic scenes were intended to soothe the President's nerves, just as the Park has calmed New Yorkers for generations. This summer is the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the state's wise decision-influenced by the preëminent nineteenth-century landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing-to set aside a giant chunk of swampy Manhattan ground for the creation of the first major landscaped public park in the United States. Central Park, An American Masterpiece, by Sara Cedar Miller, the Park's official historian, is itself a welcoming oasis, teeming with photographs of lush meadows, rustic pergolas, whimsical bridges, and Catskills-inspired ravines. The Park's eight hundred and forty-three acres, we learn, are easily discernible by shuttle astronauts; its sunken transverse roads were the prototype for the modern highway system; and its Great Lawn, originally a reservoir, was filled in with rubble from the Rockefeller Center construction site. The park we know today-featuring Balto the sled dog, Cleopatra's Needle, and Wollman Rink-descends from design entry No. 33, the famous "Greensward" plan of architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The University of Massachusetts Press has reprinted Walks and Talks of An American Farmer in England, Olmsted's engaging account of his 1850 ramble around England and Wales, including his fateful encounter with Birkenhead Park, near Liverpool. "This magnificent pleasure-ground," Olmsted wrote, "is entirely, unreservedly, and for ever the people's own.

( Mark Rozzo)

The New Yorker

"In this book we get not only a young American's vivid impressions of mid-nineteenth century England, but also the first glimmers of Frederick Law Olmsted the observant journalist and future landscape designer. Charles McLaughlin's erudite introduction usefully puts all this in the proper perspective."—Witold Rybczynski, author of A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century "It is fascinating to see Olmsted, whose life work as a park maker and city planner was still uncharted, here absorbing and recording first-hand impressions of England's rapidly changing countryside and growing industrial cities as he theorizes how art, science, technology, and nature might be united toward socially beneficial ends in democratic America. Charles McLaughlin's gracefully erudite introduction to this timely re-publication of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England provides a vivid portrait of a young mid-nineteenth-century traveler professing opinions, making observations, and forming interests that constitute the seeds of genius from which would flourish an innovative, far-reaching, influential career in landscape design."—Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Founding president, Central Park Conservancy Director, Garden History and Landscape Studies, Bard Graduate Center "It is most welcome to have, for the first time in over a century, an edition of the full text of Frederick Law Olmsted's first, and most engaging, book. Written with the enthusiasm and impressionability of youth, Walks and Talks is a charming chronicle of a Connecticut Yankee's discovery of old scenes and new ideas in the land of his ancestors. Other editions published since the 1852 original have given only a partial glimpse of the richness of this remarkable journal. This new edition benefits greatly from the annotation that accompanies and expands on Olmsted's text, while the editor's gracefully phrased introduction provides a most useful setting for the narrative."—Charles Beveridge, Series Editor, the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers American University

From the Publisher

It is most welcome to have, for the first time in over a century, an edition of the full text of Frederick Law Olmsted's first, and most engaging, book. Written with the enthusiasm and impressionability of youth, Walks and Talks is a charming chronicle of a Connecticut Yankee's discovery of old scenes and new ideas in the land of his ancestors. Other editions published since the 1852 original have given only a partial glimpse of the richness of this remarkable journal. This new edition benefits greatly from the annotation that accompanies and expands on Olmsted's text, while the editor's gracefully phrased introduction provides a most useful setting for the narrative.

Charles Beveridge

It is fascinating to see Olmsted, whose life work as a park maker and city planner was still uncharted, here absorbing and recording first-hand impressions of England's rapidly changing countryside and growing industrial cities as he theorizes how art, science, technology, and nature might be united toward socially beneficial ends in democratic America. Charles McLaughlin's gracefully erudite introduction to this timely re-publication of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England provides a vivid portrait of a young mid-nineteenth-century traveler professing opinions, making observations, and forming interests that constitute the seeds of genius from which would flourish an innovative, far-reaching, influential career in landscape design.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers