Resumen de Review essay: John Claudius Loudon and the Early Nineteenth Century in Great Britain
John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) is often associated with British villas, cottages, and suburban gardens between the 1820s and 1860s. A landscape gardener by profession, he made his reputation as a distinguished horticultural writer with the publication of his Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822). In the years that followed, Loudon produced encyclopaedias of Agriculture, Architecture, Trees and Shrubs, and Plants: all octavo volumes of more than 1000 pages each, with small print and hundreds of woodcuts. In these works, as in his magazines of gardening, architecture and natural history, Loudon offered a wide range of technical information on climate, soils, and natural resources; construction, heating and ventilating; and discussions of the theory of design as well as criticisms of plans and sections. More immediately appealing to the general public, however, were the hundreds of elevations and perspectives showing cottages and villas in various historical styles; the vignettes of gardens; and the drawings of the indigenous and exotic trees and shrubs then available to the British householder.
