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The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 Paperback – Illustrated, May 1, 2012

by Molly Peacock (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 302 ratings
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In 1772, upon the death of her second husband, Mary Delany arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors, and, at the age of seventy-two, created a new art form: mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany produced an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica. As she tracks the extraordinary life of Delany-friend of George Frideric Handel and Jonathan Swift-internationally acclaimed poet Molly Peacock weaves in delicate parallels in her own life and, in doing so, creates a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art. This gorgeously designed book, featuring thirty-five full-color illustrations, is to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Bloomsbury USA
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    8.45 x 1.4 x 7.95 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1608196976
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1608196975
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The volume itself is a craft object, sumptuously presented and designed, on fine paper, with colophons and decorations, and full-page colour reproductions. . . . The Paper Garden will be everyone's favourite Christmas present this year."
-- Victoria Glendinning, "The Globe and Mail
"
"Like collage itself, The Paper Garden is carefully layered--part fascinating biography . . . part gripping memoir, . . . accompanied by dozens of vivid photo reproductions. Beautifully written and rendered."
-- "Maclean's"
Complementing her research, Peacock's prose is a delight. . . . A fascinating, uplifting and beautiful book."
-- Claire Holden Rothman, "The Gazette "(Montreal)
"Rich and poetic. . . . Teeming with life -- and gorgeous colour illustrations."
-- "Winnipeg Free Press"
"The perfect gift for the hardcore book lover [The Paper Garden is] more than a beautiful glimpse at Delany's very interesting life . . . a considered and shared contempla

About the Author

Molly Peacockis the award-winning author of five volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush, and a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. A transplanted New Yorker, she lives in Toronto.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury USA; Reprint edition (May 1, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1608196976
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608196975
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.45 x 1.4 x 7.95 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 302 ratings

About the author

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Molly Peacock

Molly Peacock

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Molly Peacock is a widely anthologized poet, biographer, memoirist, and New Yorker transplanted to Toronto, her adopted city.

Her newest biography is FLOWER DIARY: IN WHICH MARY HIESTER REID PAINTS, TRAVELS, MARRIES & OPENS A DOOR (ECW Press). “Part memoir, part biography, this is a beautifully written and layered volume that opens its arms wide and encompasses art, domesticity, the intimacy of marriage and of death. Lush and beautifully produced,” Sue Carter wrote in the Toronto Star. This layered memoir and biography examines the balancing act of female creativity and domesticity in the life of Mary Hiester Reid, a painter who produced over three hundred stunning, emotive floral still lifes and landscapes. This lush and beautifully produced treatise also tracks Peacock’s own marriage with the late Joyce scholar Michael Groden.

FLOWER DIARY is a companion of sorts to THE PAPER GARDEN: MRS. DELANY BEGINS HER LIFE’S WORK AT 72, a Canadian bestseller, named a Book of the Year by The Economist, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times, The London Evening Standard and Booklist, published in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. “Like her glorious and multilayered collages, Delany is so vivid a character she almost jumps from the page,” Andrea Wulf wrote in The New York Times Book Review.

Molly’s most recent book of poems is THE ANALYST (W.W. Norton & Company) where she takes up a unique task: telling the story of her psychotherapist who survived a stroke by reconnecting with her girlhood talent for painting. Her previous volumes include THE SECOND BLUSH, CORNUCOPIA: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (both from W. W. Norton and Company); TAKE HEART, RAW HEAVEN (both from Random House); and AND LIVE APART (University of Missouri Press). The New York Times Book Review writes: “Ms. Peacock uses rhyme and meter as a way to cut reality into sizeable chunks, the sense of the poem spilling from line to line, breathlessly.” The Washington Post writes: "Rich music follows the beat of Molly Peacock's baton."

Molly ventured into short fiction with ALPHABETIQUE: 26 CHARACTERISTIC FICTIONS magically illustrated by Kara Kosaka, published by McClelland & Stewart. Her memoir, PARADISE, PIECE BY PIECE, about her choice not to have children, is now an e-book. Molly is one of the subjects of Renee McCormick’s documentary, A LIFE WITHOUT CONVENTION, https://vimeo.com/178503153.

As a New Yorker, she helped create Poetry in Motion on the subways and buses; in Toronto she founded THE BEST CANADIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH. Molly lives and works in Toronto, but returns to New York City each spring to teach at the 92nd Street Y.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
302 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

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Mary L. Tabor
5.0 out of 5 stars "Some things take living long enough to do."
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2011
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With this line Molly Peacock evokes the spirit, inspiration and breath of this beautiful book about the artist Mary Delany who created nine hundred eighty-five mosaics, the first completed in her seventy-third year. But to say that this is a book about the art of Mary Delany, her exquisite mosaics of flowers, which this book is, is to understate its power, its aim. The poet Molly Peacock has taken Mary Delany in her sights and locked onto her life to reveal not only Mary's story, but Molly's, and to reveal the breath of life that drives the creative impulse. Her words speak better than mine: "... [Y]ou must have technical skill to accomplish anything, but you also must have passion, which in an odd way is technique forgotten." "The state of not-knowing ... recaptures youth's novel excitements." "Mere self expression is not art. Nor is excellent technique on its own. ... Both passion and virtuosity are required for this leap." Peacock writes about the artist's solitude, the need to say "no," on "the incivility of the artist at work (what others call selfishness)," on the need for applause and how the encouragement of others increases the productivity of the artist and is not to be underestimated. She informs and inspires as she uncovers the life and work of Mary Delany. And perhaps more profoundly, she cuts to the bone of her own anxieties about life and death and love. Look at this book for its gorgeous reproductions of Mary Delany's work. Read this book for the intertwined history of Mary Delany's remarkable life and Molly Peacock's tender memoir. Keep this book, as I will, for its insight on art and life, on living well and on the gift of "direct observation that leads to indirect epiphany."
11 people found this helpful
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Stacia M. Fleegal
5.0 out of 5 stars Innovative nonfiction in full bloom--who needs a real garden?
Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2011
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Molly Peacock, who is an extraordinary poet and memoirist, has written a visually, textually, and conceptually stunning and important book about women and creativity. Her reverential treatment of everything artistic her subject, Mary Granville Pendarves Delany, undertook, from her work with paper and shells to designing her own clothing, all the way to her creation of 985 meticulous, botanically accurate representations of flowers beginning at age 72, is an insistence upon Mrs. Delany's creativity as manifesting in her every endeavor. To make such an insistence is to validate a woman's artistic life.

The Paper Garden is a book that defies categorization. We should resist the urge to describe this book as genre-busting because that's too limiting. The Paper Garden busts genre-busting. There is thoroughly well-researched history, botany, and biography, as well as Peacock's trademark provocative memoir, grand metaphor, and lush poetry, all woven together so deftly that to attempt anything on its scale will surely vex other prose writers for decades to come. What Peacock accomplishes is nothing short of a layering of so many women's experiences (how many women are mentioned!--Mary Delany, her sister, her aunt, her friends, the author, the author's mother and grandmother, female museum curators/art historians, and so on...) that a commentary on collective consciousness seems to emerge. We begin to realize how so many women's lives are connected through the practice of art, the making of a meal, the loss or fear of losing a partner, the designing of a gown or a garden, the complexities of adult sibling friendship, the smelling of a flower. I've never read a book like it.
5 people found this helpful
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eclecticmix
5.0 out of 5 stars Quality book with quality packaging
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2023
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This was not a planned purchase. Came across by accident and the story and history sounded interesting, and happy to find on Amazon Historical floral artwork by a very talented woman way ahead of her time. Book in very good condition for a former library book, and was packaged well.
One person found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed in the author of this book!
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2019
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This book would have been better if it had just been about the artist. Her work was beautiful.
2 people found this helpful
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Benjamin Cardenas
4.0 out of 5 stars Lectura
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2023
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Es más un libro de lectura que de imágenes.
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Lilith Rose
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read, great condition!
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2024
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Thank you! I loved this book and the condition was great. A bit dense of a read, but well worth it. It inspired me to make art again! :)
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Coneflower Books
5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite!
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2011
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Prose from a poet, I gloried in the expressive language!

This wonderful book is a delight from it physical appearance (small, with heavy covers, neatly sewn pages, and full page colored reprints of some of Mrs. Delaney's 985 Flora Delanica pages) to the author's technique of entwining her own life with into experiences of her subject, to the beautiful 35 reprints of Delaney's work and a wonderful painting of her. She uses one of Mrs. Delaney's flowers as a theme for each chapter, then builds on what was evolving in her life as she constructed this collage, and how elements of each flower speak to creativity, and events in the author's life.

I found this to be a masterful piece of writing on so many levels. It is not the usual biography, but one that sparkles with language, provides time travel to the 1700's, then brings you back to the present. I loved the contrast of the author's life experiences with her subject's. When I finished reading, I felt as if I had spent time with Mrs. Delany in person, and would miss her companionship.

Molly Peacock's fondness for her subject resonated with me, and I will be reading the other two other books about her. To me, a successful author leaves you wanting more.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Susan Masters
5.0 out of 5 stars Story is beautifully written and the illustrations are to die for!
Reviewed in Canada on February 16, 2022
Verified Purchase
The book inspired me to draw and paint one it’s illustrations , the Canada Lily . Ms. Peacock writes in an engaging and lyrical manner.
I enjoyed this book so much!
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Susan Masters
5.0 out of 5 stars Story is beautifully written and the illustrations are to die for!
Reviewed in Canada on February 16, 2022
The book inspired me to draw and paint one it’s illustrations , the Canada Lily . Ms. Peacock writes in an engaging and lyrical manner.
I enjoyed this book so much!
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Mary D
5.0 out of 5 stars A truly beautiful book
Reviewed in Canada on October 16, 2021
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This is a fascinating story of a woman who began her artistic career at 72. The illustrations and the quality of the paper mean that you will want to keep this book and revisit it often.
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Barbara M. Hill
5.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful story! This biography
Reviewed in Canada on April 4, 2018
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What a wonderful story! This biography, interwoven with its author's history, both inspires and causes one to reflect on life's vagaries. Mrs. Delaney was enormously talented, and was both crippled and enabled by her time. Her artwork was fabulous. What an incredible and wonderful tale! I am so glad that I was encouraged by friends to buy and read this book. It's a pleasure to own--I love leafing through its coloured prints.
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Diane FIne
3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
Reviewed in Canada on November 25, 2019
Verified Purchase
Was unhappy with the way the author interjected her life story into this bio of Mrs. Delaney.
It drastically spoilt the read for me. The parts on Mrs. Delaney were riveting. Also found the writer took too much poetic writers license. She should have just told the story in a straightforward way. Most disappointing.
One person found this helpful
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Paul Olson
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliantly written work that explore the relations or relations and ...
Reviewed in Canada on August 31, 2014
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A brilliantly written work that explore the relations or relations and how life's work (and hurts) evolve and transform over time. Written with a stunning honestly and poetic set of synchronized similes that remind us of what language and intelligence can be. A tour de force for intelligence which shows the bridges and gaps in gender, aging, social class power, and art in a way which is nonetheless hopeful at a series of levels. Brilliant.
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