Jane Webb was later Mrs John Loudon. This is a new edition by Naperville: Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, 2022. First edition: anonymous, London: Henry Colburn, 1827 and thereby hangs a tale. Colburn’s second edition credited Jane Webb as the author.
This event has now passed
Title Meet the Book Manufactory of Bayswater!
Abstract Garden historians know of John Claudius Loudon as a man with a phenomenal output. He’s credited with 60 million words on horticulture, agriculture and architecture by the 1986 edition of The Oxford Companion to Gardens. And this a man with one arm amputated and the other contracted to all but uselessness by the long-term consequences of rheumatic fever! The explanation is that as well as being hugely hardworking himself he was also – as conventional in the early 19C – the front man for a family business. John, Jane, Jane and Mary lived, along with Agnes and Agnes (though they weren’t alive simultaneously), in a prototype semi-detached villa of their own design. The mezzanine verandah connected the two homes to the publishing office in the extension at the back, and there was a plantspersons’ garden.
Come and hear about the ‘Book Manufactory’s’ combined skills in landscape design, farming, architecture, editing, writing fiction and non-fiction, translating from continental European languages, botanical, horticultural and engineering drawing, wood engraving, commerce, networking and socialising across the era’s rigid social class system.
Our Speaker Gin is building on her garden history diploma from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and has recently completed a Cambridge master’s degree in history. Her dissertation focussed on some of the social and political aspects of the Loudon family’s work as shown by The Gardener’s Magazine which they published from 1826 to 1843. Gin is now embarking on a PhD which will expand on this topic and get into the gender history aspects of The Book Manufactory of Bayswater. Outside of research, Gin enjoys golden age detective fiction, crewel wool embroidery, observing nature while walking her dog, and being an active grandmother. In earlier life, she qualified as a doctor at Addenbrooke’s and worked there and at the West Suffolk Hospital before doing higher specialist training and working as a Public Health physician.
Venue and time Hilton Village Hall PE28 9PF. The talk will start at 2:30pm and will be broadcast simultaneously on Zoom (see below).
Bookings £6 for members of CGT and the Plant Heritage Society / £7 for guests, payable by BACS please and email admin (in-person). For this event, we are trialling simultaneous broadcasting on Zoom, also at £6, so if you would like to join the live-stream, please email admin (for Zoom) for Zoom joining details.
Cambridgeshire Gardens Trust 