Literary Gardens

You remember the garden as clearly as the story.

A locked gate, a curious path, a grand lawn with rather too much happening beneath the surface. Some fictional gardens take root so firmly that you feel you could find your way around them. Literary Gardens revisits 50 of literature’s most evocative gardens, reimagined in artwork, from the childhood worlds of The Secret Garden and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to the more complicated landscapes of Rebecca and The Great Gatsby.

Explore how writers turn gardens into places of desire, romance, adventure and escape, with further stops in The Pillow Book and The Big Sleep. It’s a chance to wander familiar stories by a different route, noticing what grows at their edges. No weeding required. Fiction has its advantages.

Details

• By Sandra Lawrence, with illustrations by Lucille Clerc
• Hardback, published February 2025
• Explores 50 gardens from literature, reimagined through artwork
• Featured works include The Secret Garden, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Rebecca, The Great Gatsby, The Pillow Book and The Big Sleep
• Examines how writers use gardens as settings and symbols
• The author is a journalist and garden writer; the illustrator’s work draws inspiration from nature and architecture

Perfect for

• Readers who remember a fictional place with the affection of somewhere they’ve lived
• Garden lovers whose planting dreams have a distinctly literary influence
• Classic-fiction devotees curious about what a garden reveals beyond the flowers