GAR022000 Archives - Duckworth Books

Understorey

‘A beautiful, quiet, achingly tender book’ Kerri ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places

In Understorey, artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker records in prose and stunning original line drawings a year spent looking closely at weeds, our most ubiquitous and accessible plants. In gardens, on verges or clustered around municipal lampposts, weeds offer a year-round spectacle of wildlife. The benefits to us of being among greenery are well known, but what exactly are these vaguely familiar shapes that accompany our every step, yet pass beneath our notice? How and when do they emerge, bloom and subside, and what would it mean to notice them?

Meditating too on how they appear in other artists’ work, from a bramble framing a sixth-century Byzantine manuscript to a kudzu vine installation in contemporary Berlin, Chapman Parker explores the art of paying attention even to the smallest things.

Deeper Into the Wood

In the late 1990s, Ruth Pavey bought four acres of scrub land above the Somerset Levels. She devoted the next two decades to improving the land into a lush wood; a haven for birds, insects and all manner of wildlife. Beneath the shade of the trees, she now reflects on the fate of her wood.

Deeper Into the Wood recounts a year in the life of an amateur naturalist working with wildlife experts to interpret the language of the land with the aim of preserving the wood for generations to come. Lyrically told stories of local people and regional history are accompanied throughout by Ruth’s beautifully hand-drawn illustrations.

Beyond the Secret Garden

The definitive and revealing biography of the author of The Secret Garden.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s favourite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.

On the surface, Frances’ life was extremely successful: hosting regular literary salons in her home and travelling frequently between properties in the UK and America. But behind the colourful personal and social life, she was a complex and contradictory character. She lost both parents by her twenty-first birthday, Henry James called her "the most heavenly of women" although avoided her; prominent people admired her and there were many friendships as well as an ill-advised marriage to a much younger man that ended in heartache. Her success was punctuated by periods of depression, in one instance brought on by the tragic loss of her eldest son to consumption.

Ann Thwaite creates a sympathetic but balanced and eye-opening biography of the woman who has enchanted numerous generations of children.

A Wood of One’s Own

Touring the West Country in the late 1990s, Pavey found herself in the Somerset Levels. On seeing this expanse of reclaimed land under its wide, soft skies she was struck by its beauty and set-out to plant a wood, tree by tree. She bought four acres, and over the years transformed them into a haven where woodland plants and creatures could flourish; an emblem of enduring life in a changeable world.

Interwoven with Pavey’s candid descriptions of the practical challenges she faced are forays into the Levels’ local history, as well as thoughtful portraits of its inhabitants past and present. Accompanied throughout by her evocative hand-drawn illustrations, A Wood of One’s Own is a lyrical, beguiling and inspiring story; a potent reminder of nature’s delicate balance, and its comforting and abiding presence.

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