FOUR SEASONS: A Treasury of Verse and Prose - Tapa dura

This book is a celebration of the variety of the English landscape celebrated through verse, prose and painting. Sheila Pickles has selected over 50 of her favourite pieces of writing capturing the transient moods of the English seasons, accompanied by period illustrations. It is divided into four sections, each evoking an atmosphere of seasons past: spring provides us with Robert Browning's nostalgic "Home Thoughts From Abroad", with Monet's vision of light and colour in his waterlily paintings. Summer's splendour yield Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's Day" with paintings capturing the bloom of the season from de Morgan, Waterhouse and Milais. Autumn's mists are evoked by Keats, Dickens and Lawrence, while both bleak and festive aspects of winter are described by George Eliot, Hardy, Dickens, Klimt and Tissot. This antology is scented with Penhaligon's "Gardenia".