Garden writer and historian, Jackie Bennett, will be visiting Chawton House Library to talk about her new book, The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Best-Loved Authors.
In this beautifully illustrated book of 18 gardens and 20 writers, the author examines how poets, writers and novelists, including Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Agatha Christie, derived a creative spirit from their private garden, how they tended and enjoyed their gardens and how they managed their outdoor space.
We caught up with Jackie Bennett to find out more.
What sparked the idea for the book?
It was an idea that grew gradually. I visit a lot of gardens and it struck me that there are quite a few that used to belong to writers. And, knowing a garden belonged to a writer gives it an added dimension: it tends to be more atmospheric because of the people who lived there. So, I wanted to explore these literary writers and understand what part their own garden, or gardens they knew well, had played in their life and their work.
What made you choose the 20 writers featured in the book?
There were lots on the wish list – but I mainly went for gardens that were open to the public or could be visited by appointment. And, I wanted these to be real gardens that the writers themselves had played some part in and in some way had added to the history of the gardens. Researching the book was an exciting journey for me, so I wanted people to be able follow in the writers’ footsteps and trace the same journey I’d taken to discover them and their gardens.
How did the gardens inspire the work of the writers, particularly some of the female writers?
The writers used their gardens in lots of different ways. Some used them as a hideaway and somewhere to write, including Virginia Woolf, whose writing ‘shed’ is probably the most famous. Agatha Christie, on the other hand, used her garden at Greenway in Devon as a location for her crime stories. It’s very clear in at least three of her novels (Five Little Pigs, Dead Man’s Folly and Ordeal By Innocence) that she’s writing about her own garden.
With other writers, including Jane Austen, it’s more difficult to pin down exactly which gardens are which in their work. However, what I’ve learned about Austen is that she was very knowledgeable about gardens and landscapes. She was familiar with grand houses, such as Chawton House(now Chawton House Library), which belonged to her brother Edward Austen Knight, and those of friends of the family, but her own situation was much simpler. She was brought up on a small holding at the family rectory in Steventon near Basingstoke, and then spent her last years at a cottage in Chawton which had far more modest gardens.
How does Austen’s knowledge or love of gardens and landscapes show in her work?
Austen visited a lot of big houses in her time and was very aware of the nuances of where people lived and the kind of garden they could afford. For example, on Elizabeth Bennet’s arrival at Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice, Austen describes the way the house comes into the view and the landscape and the woods and you feel that she’s been to a house very much like that. She was also certainly very aware and interested in all that was going on in her small cottage garden in Chawton, as her letters show. But it was lucky for us that she wasn’t a gardener herself and left the day-to-day care of the garden to her mother and sister Cassandra while she stayed indoors and wrote!
Did you visit all the gardens featured in the book?
I’ve been to every house and garden in the book and spent a lot of time at each. I feel you can’t look at a house and garden in isolation and that you need to take in the surrounding landscape to really get a feeling for what it was like for the writer to live there. Visiting a place gives you a much deeper insight into how these writers would have spent their day, how they would have worked and how the views may have inspired them. For example, John Ruskin’s study at Brantwood, his house in the Lake District, has spectacular views across Coniston Water and you can’t appreciate the effect of such surroundings unless you go there yourself.
Did you find that visiting these places provided inspiration to you as a writer?
It gave me a feeling that these writers were real people – they had all the problems and struggles that everyone has with their household, money and family. Yet, as a writer you have to transcend such worries or distractions and somehow make a space for your work. A lot of the writers often struggled to find somewhere to work and sometimes their garden gave them a place to escape or it was just somewhere to go to walk and to think.
Signed copies of The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Best-Loved Authors, published by Frances Lincoln, will be on sale at the book talk with Jackie Bennett at an exclusive price of £20 (RRP £25), with proceeds helping to support the charity’s work.
The event runs from 11am to 1.30pm on Wednesday, 3 September, at Chawton House Library, and includes refreshments and a guided tour of the gardens with Head Gardener, Alan Bird. Tickets cost £11.00 (or £8.50 for students/friends) from Eventbrite or call Chawton House Library on 01420 541010.