Product Description

"The Tulip" is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish and devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip into the world-wide phenomenon it is today. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Pavord tells how the tulip arrived from Turkey and took the whole of Western Europe by storm. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, this beautifully produced and irresistible volume will become a bible, a unique source book, a universal gift book and a joy to all who possess it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123454 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than six million pounds in today's money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anne Pavord's wonderful book on this most seductive of flowers.

Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, as she scrambles across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip, whose discovery leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful yet enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the tulip, from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul, including the downfall of Ahmed III in 1730, so indulgent was his desire for the flower, to the present cultivation of the flower by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way incredible stories of people's investment in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of the unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colours are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant, but produces its gorgeous colours. The Tulipomania which gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colours imaginable. The Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects; buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again! --Jerry Brotton

From the Publisher
Selected reviews of The Tulip
‘The Tulip is a stylish book, beautifully illustrated’ The Times

‘Anna Pavord’s book is a must’ The Express

‘Promises to do for the Tulip what Longitude did for clocks and Fermat’s Last Theorem did for Maths.’ The Observer

‘It should certainly be bought by all who love tulips. Those who do not are not necessarily past redemption and they should buy it too.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Tulips are clearly ready for a flamboyant resurgence… [a] gorgeous book’ The Independent on Sunday

‘Tipped to set the publishing World alight’ The Scotsman

A magnum opus…Many people all over the world will want The Tulip very much indeed.’ Literary Review

‘Anna Pavord’s irresistible book is sumptuously illustrated’ Country Homes and Gardens

‘Beware: This seductive book could start tulipomania all over again.’ Harpers & Queen

‘Beautifully written…a triumph of scholarship and a credit to Bloomsbury’ The Spectator

‘This is a wonderful book… the flood of energy with which she surrounds her subject is breathtaking’ Irish Independent

About the Author
Anna Pavord is the gardening correspondent for THE INDEPENDENT and the author of widely praised gardening books including PLANT PARTNERS and THE BORDER BOOK. She wrote for the OBSERVER for twenty years, has contributed to COUNTRY LIFE, ELLE DECORATION and COUNTRY LIVING, and is an associate editor of GARDENS ILLUSTRATED. For the last thirty years she has lived in Dorset, England where she is currently making a new garden. Constantly experimenting with new combinations of flowers and foliage, she finds it a tremendous source of inspiration.

Customer Reviews

Nice plates, shame about the text
One of the most beautiful books I have ever handled. Gorgeous illustrations, carefully - even lovingly - chosen. But the accompanying text was repetitive, self-indulgent and dull, dull, dull. Deserves to be a coffee table book.

Strong on horticulture - weak on history
As both a keen gardener and an historian, I found this both a fascinating and an infuriating book. There is no doubt that Anna Pavord is an authority on the botany and the history of the tulip, and she has done a magnificent job in researching the whole story of the flower, bringing in information from a wide variety of sources.

But when Pavord strays outside the realms of horticultural history she displays an alarming lack of knowledge. It is, for example, woefully simplistic to state that Sultan Ahmed III forfeited his throne through his love of tulips; many political factors were far more important. Pavord misdates the vital first encounter with the flower by Ambassador Busbecq (which we're led to believ was one of the most important incidents in the whole history of the tulip) by four years. And she makes only the most cursory attempt to sketch in the historical background, whether it be in the Ottoman Empire, the United Provinces or England. In summary, this is a fine book for garden lovers, but one serious historians will find jejeune.

Leaden product of obsession
...to readsome of the early reviews you'd have thought the author had writtenthe Bible, not this leadenly-paced and excessively-detailed tombstone, which nine times out of ten fails to do true justice to the most wonderful of flowers. Pavord needs to realise that the first rule of writing this sort of history is to tell a story - not to regurgitate everything you've ever learned about the subject. It is this lack of discrimination that turns what should have been a fascinating book into a trudge. The story only really comes alive with its discussion of the famous Dutch tulip mania, and even here the author fails to ask and answer the most obvious of questions - why did the mania develop as it did? Yes, there is plenty of interesting information here and yes, Anna Pavord has made it accessible to everyone by writing this book, but what a joy it could and should have been to read. And where the sumptuous - if over-priced - hardcover does offer a dazzling array of contemporary illustrations, the paperback loses out because it comes with only a few skimpy photo sections.

I'm sorry to sound so jaundiced. If I'd discovered this book for myself I'd probably have found it mildly interesting and written at least a lukewarm review. But the hype that has surrounded The Tulip from the moment of publication baffles and irritates me.