gardens

First edition of an illustrated account of the Bois de Boulogne, Paris’s second-largest park, a former royal hunting ground and pleasure garden which was given to the city by Napoleon III in 1852 as before then Paris’s only parks (the Tuileries, Luxembourg Garden, Palais-Royal, and Jardin des Plantes) were all in the centre and there was nothing on the outskirts of the rapidly expanding city.

First edition of one of the most influential works of French garden theory. Morel was the father of landscape gardening in France, best known for the Théorie des Jardins and for his work with the marquis de Giradin in the celebrated garden at Ermenonville, and later at Malmaison. Morel never travelled to England, but was clearly influenced by theories of landscape being developed there. The title here bears a quote from Milton: ‘In narrow room nature’s Whole Wealth, yea more / A heav’n on earth...’ (Paradise Lost IV).