Strange Blooms: The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants

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Description

In seventeenth-century Britain, a new breed of 'curious' gardeners were pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and new plants were stealing into Europe from East and West. The man responsible for introducing many of the plants to Britain at that time was John Tradescant, whose passion for collecting sent him as far as Russian Archangel, the pirate strongholds of North Africa and the battlefields of France. Tradescant's only son John was his apprentice. Strange Blooms tells the Tradescants' story - as gardeners, as collectors and above all as exemplars of an age that began in wonder and ended with the dawning of science. Meticulously researched and vividly evoking the drama of their lives, Jennifer Potter's book takes its readers to the edge of an expanding universe. Strange Blooms is a magnificent pleasure for gardeners and non-gardeners alike.

Reviews

A tour de force... We owe Potter a huge debt of gratitude for the tireless research and sifting of evidence that have allowed the Tradescants and their great legacy to emerge so clearly at last. -- Jenny Uglow * Sunday Times *
The Renaissance delight in the sheer protean variety of stuff in the world has met its ideal presenter in Jennifer Potter's open pleasure in details. -- Jane Stevenson * Daily Telegraph *
Forget Alan Titchmarsh - it's the Tradescants of Jennifer Potter's Strange Blooms we should really salute... Beautifully produced and meticulously researched. -- Andrea Wulf * Observer *
Masterly... Jennifer Potter's achievement in Strange Blooms is to have breathed life back into the Tradescant name. -- Alexander Urquhart * TLS *

Author Bio

Jennifer Potter is the author of four novels and six works of non-fiction, most recently The Jamestown Brides, The Untold Story of England's 'maids for Virginia' (Atlantic, 2018). Other titles published by Atlantic include The Rose, A True History; Seven Flowers And How They Shaped Our World; and Strange Blooms, The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants. A long-time reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and an accredited Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Consultant Fellow, she currently runs writing workshops for students and staff at British universities and was recently appointed one of the first RLF Writing Fellows at the British Library.