Life in the Garden
  • Published: 18 June 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241982181
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $28.00

Life in the Garden

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Jun 2018
EBook
2 Nov 2017
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A memoir of the author's life in gardens, and an exploration of gardens in literature

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.
  • Published: 18 June 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241982181
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $28.00
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About the author

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively grew up in Egypt but settled in England after the war and took a degree in history at St Anne's College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of PEN and the Society of Authors. She was married to the late Professor Jack Lively, has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren, and lives in Oxfordshire and London.Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave. Many of her books, including Going Back, which first appeared as a children's book, and Oleander, Jacaranda, an autobiographical memoir of her childhood days in Egypt, are published in Penguin.Penelope Lively has also written radio and television scripts and has acted as presenter for a BBC Radio 4 programme on children's literature. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award.

Also by Penelope Lively

Moon Tiger
Metamorphosis
Ammonites and Leaping Fish
How It All Began
Heat Wave
The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories
The House in Norham Gardens
See all

Praise for Life in the Garden

Rich and unusual, this is a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth. Moves between Lively's own horticultural life and a broad history of gardening

Alex Preston, Observer

Exquisite and original

Daily Telegraph

A gentle, scholarly progress through the lives and works of Penelope Lively's favoured authors - from Jane Austen to Beatrix Potter, Philip Larkin to Tom Stoppard

The Times

Enchanting. Reading this book is like walking with a wise, humorous guide through a series of garden rooms . . . and finding that vistas suddenly open out, on to history, fashion, politics, reflections on time and the taming of nature

Tablet

Lively finds memories of her own gardens scrambling like roses through insights into the history of gardening and the artists - including Woolf, Monet and PG Wodehouse - who have been inspired by their gardens

Daily Mail

Delightful

Lady

Elegant, entertaining and inspirational

Woman & Home

The perfect book for dedicated garden lovers

S Magazine

A blossoming triumph

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