The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72

by Molly Peacock

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608196975
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	05/01/2012
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.78(h) x 1.25(d)

About the Author

Molly Peacock is the award-winning author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Among her other works are How to Read a Poem ... and Start a Poetry Circle and a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece. Peacock, a member of the Spalding University brief residency MFA graduate faculty, is currently the general series editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English. A transplanted New Yorker, she lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

[A] graceful meditation on botany, nature, life and age...Delaney's story abounds with energy as Peacock brings her alive. Like her glorious multilayered collages, Delany is so vivid a character she almost jumps from the page."-New York Times Book Review” —New York Times Book Review

“A beautifully designed, eye-catching book...[The Paper Garden] is a celebration of second chances and the possibility -so attractive to those of a certain age - of an unexpected blossoming late in life....” —Washington Post

“This book layers Delany's life and work over Peacock's. It is organized by flower - forget-me-not, thistle, poppy, etc., each a metaphor for a different phase in Delany's life...the book itself is a complicated, delicate and beautiful collage.” —Los Angeles Times

“Possessed of a discerning eye, Peacock...lavishes attention on Mary's life, both social and artistic, drenching us in vivid, sensory language as if we were adrift in champagne.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Physically beautiful and emotionally transporting... To call The Paper Garden a biography is to sell it short...a sumptuous bounty of gorgeous words, striking mosaics and a spirit of joy.” —Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

…a beautifully designed, eye-catching book…it's also as intricately made as Mary Delany's paper flowers. Peacock doesn't aim just to retell the sometimes chattellike, sometimes independent existence of an upper-class woman whose acquaintances ranged from Jonathan Swift and the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks to the King and Queen of England. Nor is she content simply to set up a counterpoint with her own background, career and second marriage…Instead, she weaves in and out between the two, using Delany's flower mosaics as the starting points for reflections on love, family, art, friendship, illness and vocation…Here, then, is not only an introduction to a unique artist, but also a whole bouquet of thoughts and observations about the flow of life…
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

…Peacock takes the reader on a journey that, however obscure or strange the link might be, is a graceful meditation on botany, nature, life and age…Delany's story abounds with energy as Peacock brings her alive. Like her glorious multilayered collages, Delany is so vivid a character she almost jumps from the page.
—The New York Times

Andrea Wulf

Acclaimed poet Peacock (Second Blush, 2008, etc.) chronicles her fascination with the life of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700–1788), a largely forgotten aristocrat who, at the age of 72, created a series of beautiful cut-paper botanical mosaics.

The author entwines the story of Delany with private reflections on her own life as an artist and a woman. As Peacock undertook her eccentric quest to discover the life of the woman who created the beautiful paper mosaics that she so admired, she discovered resonant parallels. Both struggled as women and artists; both had failed first marriages and deeply satisfying second marriages; both confronted the possibility and, in the case of Delany, the reality, of the death of those cherished lovers; both worked to free themselves in adulthood from the bonds and obligations of painful family histories. Chronicling Delany's first abusive marriage and her struggles to preserve her independence as a young widow in a repressive era, Peacock reflects on her mother's oddly similar challenges with poverty and childrearing two centuries later. Throughout, the author elegantly reflects on the idea that certain works of art belong to certain moments of our lives; it is possible to encounter some works too early to understand them fully, and it is equally possible to find one'smétierwell into late adulthood. In a lightly managed running metaphor, Peacock examines the botanical life and reproductive cycle of the flowers depicted by Delany. Curiously and somewhat digressively structured, the book provides an intriguing, evocative aesthetic experience.

A lyrical, meditative rumination on art and the blossoming beauty of self that can be the gift of age and love.

Kirkus Reviews