The Reading Warehouse

The book gives a detailed history of Italian garden architecture and ornamentation by exploring over 75 villas. Wharton expertly describes the magic of these traditional gardens and explains the relationship between the local countryside, the villas and their formal gardens. Wharton was one of the first writers to take the study of formal gardens as seriously as other forms of art and architecture, and Italian Villas and Their Gardens influenced generations of landscape artists and writers. As any devoted reader of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth knows, Wharton's novels always contain intricate descriptions of houses, gardens and decor. She used descriptions of houses and their surroundings as expressions of her characters' inner struggles. Wharton had a passion for European culture and she displays quite a command of Italian garden architecture in Italian Villas and Their Gardens.

The themes of Wharton's fiction typically include journeys or travels or displacement. Cultural tensions also figure prominently, whether they are between new conventions and old traditions, or between European mores and American ways. These same concerns are intimated in Italian Villas and Their Gardens, which is a travelogue containing beautiful descriptions of an Italian tradition. This wonderful book will thrill readers.

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