FEARON, Ethelind; [Alex JARDINE, Illus.] ~ The Reluctant Gardener

FIRST UK PRINTING. Herbert Jenkins, London: 1952

Small 8vo., original green cloth with device in gilt to lower corner of front board, showing a character reclining in a deck chair; lettered in gilt to spine, with publisher's device embossed to lower board; decorative green and black endpapers, housed in the original unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (6/- net); illustrated throughout by Jardine with numerous vignettes, head and tail pieces, chapter headings and in-text illustrations, including one double-page illustration of a plot ('How to do it'/'How not to do it'); THE BOOK a very good, tight copy, the gilt a little dulled to the backstrip; light spotting to outer edge of textblock and prelims; the very good DUSTWRAPPER a little discoloured along the backstrip, with some minor rubbing and light nicking to extremities; still a lovely copy. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition of this humorous work, which offers advice for 'blisterless gardening'. Fearon was a professional gardener who wrote extensively on the subject, and was once employed by H. G. Wells during his time at Easton Lodge estate, near Fearon's home of Thaxted, between 1910 and 1928. "She has a humorously bossy streak and issues endless structures as well as sound advice", one reviewer writes of her 1948 gardening book 'The Making of a Garden'. "Never ornament for its own sake", the reviewer quotes directly, "and NEVER gnomes." The work is accompanied by numerous illustrations by Alex Jardine (1913-1987), who specialised in creating drawings for crime novels, angling books and other subjects relating to nature. A lovely copy.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good
JACKET: Very Good