The Figure in the Landscape: Poetry, Painting, and Gardening During the Eighteenth Century

Eighteenth-century England saw the rise of a "peculiarly English" art form-landscape gardening-and a corresponding change in attitudes toward the natural world. While the French, who lived under tyranny, had a tightly organized, restrictive gardens, the "free" English enjoyed gardens where they were at liberty to wander. John Dixon Hunt examines eighteenth-century letters, literary and critical works, biographies, paintings, prints, and drawings to trace the gradual movement from formal regularity toward a carefully calculated naturalness.