Overview

Summers at the Vauxhall pleasure garden in London brought diverse entertainments to a diverse public. Picturesque walks and arbors offered a pastoral retreat from the city, while at the same time the garden's attractions indulged distinctly urban tastes for fashion, novelty, and sociability. High- and low-born alike were free to walk the paths; the proximity to strangers and the danger of dark walks were as thrilling to visitors as the fountains and fireworks. Vauxhall was the venue that made the careers of composers, inspired novelists, and showcased the work of artists. Scoundrels, sudden downpours, and extortionate ham prices notwithstanding, Vauxhall became a must-see destination for both Londoners and tourists. Before long, there were Vauxhalls across Britain and America, from York to New York, Norwich to New Orleans. This edited volume provides the first book-length study of the attractions and interactions of the pleasure garden, from the opening of Vauxhall in the seventeenth century to the amusement parks of the early twentieth. Nine essays explore the mutual influences of human behavior and design: landscape, painting, sculpture, and even transient elements such as lighting and music tacitly informed visitors how to move within the space, what to wear, how to behave, and where they might transgress. The Pleasure Garden, from Vauxhall to Coney Island draws together the work of musicologists, art historians, and scholars of urban studies and landscape design to unfold a cultural history of pleasure gardens, from the entertainments they offered to the anxieties of social difference they provoked.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jonathan Conlin
Publisher:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Imprint:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.612kg
ISBN:  

9780812244380

ISBN 10:   0812244389
Pages:   328
Publication Date:   02 January 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Jonathan Conlin 1 Chapter 1. Theaters of Hospitality: The Forms and Uses of Private Landscapes and Public Gardens John Dixon Hunt 29 Chapter 2. Pleasure Gardens and Urban Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century Peter Borsay 49 Chapter 3. Guns in the Gardens: Peter Monamy's Paintings for Vauxhall Eleanor Hughes 78 Chapter 4. Performance Alfresco: Music-Making in London's Pleasure Gardens Rachel Cowgill 100 Chapter 5. Pleasure Gardens of America: Anxieties of National Identity Naomi Stubbs 127 Chapter 6. Pleasure Gardens in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: ''Useful for All Classes of Society'' Lake Douglas 150 Chapter 7. Night and Day: Illusion and Carnivalesque at Vauxhall Deborah Epstein Nord 177 Chapter 8. ''Strange Beauty in the Night'': Whistler's Nocturnes of Cremorne Gardens Anne Koval 195 Chapter 9. Edwardian Amusement Parks: The Pleasure Garden Reborn? Josephine Kane 217 Notes 247 Select Bibliography 299 List of Contributors 303 Index 307 Acknowledgments 315

Reviews

This volume will be a welcome addition to our knowledge of the cultural history of gardens as entertainment centers, not least in terms of the significant shift in the perception of gardens from private, exclusive spaces to public spaces shadowed with anxieties about class, ethnicity, and gender. -Richard Allen Cave, Royal Holloway, University of London

Author Information

Jonathan Conlin is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Southampton and author of Civilisation and The Nation's Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery.

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