Elise L. Smith – författare

Combining an analysis of literature and art, this book contends that the 'domesticated landscape' is key to understanding women's complex negotiation of private and public life in a period of revolution and transition. As more women became engaged in horticultural and botanical pursuits, the meaning of gardens - recognized here both as sites of pleasure and labor, and as conceptual and symbolic spaces - became more complex. Women writers and artists often used gardens to educate their readers, to enter into political and cultural debates, and to signal moments of intellectual and spiritual insight. Gardens functioned as a protected vantage point for women, providing them with a new language and authority to negotiate between domestic space and the larger world. Although this more expansive form of domesticity still highlighted the virtues associated with the feminized home, it also promised a wider field of action, re-centering domesticity outward.

Combining an analysis of literature and art, this book contends that the 'domesticated landscape' is key to understanding women's complex negotiation of private and public life in a period of revolution and transition. As more women became engaged in horticultural and botanical pursuits, the meaning of gardens - recognized here both as sites of pleasure and labor, and as conceptual and symbolic spaces - became more complex. Women writers and artists often used gardens to educate their readers, to enter into political and cultural debates, and to signal moments of intellectual and spiritual insight. Gardens functioned as a protected vantage point for women, providing them with a new language and authority to negotiate between domestic space and the larger world. Although this more expansive form of domesticity still highlighted the virtues associated with the feminized home, it also promised a wider field of action, re-centering domesticity outward.

Focusing on eight writers and artists, this book examines the centrality of the countryside to women's work, creativity, and aspirations in early-twentieth-century England. The authors introduce us to figures who should be better known today: educators, artists, novelists, poets, and memoirists. Divided into four sections, with foci on professions and education, the transformation of the countryside, arts and crafts, and dislocation and loss, this book by a literature scholar and an art historian brings an interdisciplinary perspective, providing a unique view of women's responses to such major issues of the twentieth century as war, industrialization, modernist ideology, and gender. From Mary Watts's remarkable pottery to Beatrix Potter's work as a children's author and environmentalist to Dora Carrington's haunting paintings and Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst Castle Garden, this book challenges readers to rethink the early twentieth century through the lens of their work.

Southern Women, Southern Landscapes: Cultural Reflections on the Garden, 1870–1970 is an exploration of a number of Southern women—writers, artists, and gardeners, both Black and white—who looked to the land for inspiration and identity. Examining figures ranging from Reconstruction through the height of the civil rights era in Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia, Southern Women, Southern Landscapes focuses on a period that marks a profound change in women’s cultural and social roles. Page and Smith explore the women’s various attitudes toward the natural world as they responded to the disruptions of war and the restrictions of race and gender. The book emphasizes the concept of a "storied landscape," recognizing that landscapes are both natural and cultural phenomena that speak to humans who are open to their narratives. The women featured in Southern Women, Southern Landscapes were often concerned with place-making and the specificity of locale, including gardens, larger landscapes, and wild places, but they also believed in a shared responsibility to care for the earth more generally. Communities, partnerships, and friendships in various forms were all crucial to their creativity in the garden or in other endeavors related to the natural world. This book addresses these broad-ranging issues through extensive archival research to support a variety of genres and media—novels, poetry, essays, letters, and newspapers, as well as book illustrations, photographs, folk art, and more traditional paintings.