Product Description

The Tulip is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish, devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the world-wide phenomenon it is today. The U.S. alone imports three billion tulip bulbs each year, Germany and France even more.

Why did the tulip dominate so many lives through so many centuries in so many countries? The author, a self-confessed tulipomaniac, has spent six years looking for answers. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behavior, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution.

The tulip made great fortunes for people but was responsible for equally spectacular bankruptcies. Millions of aficionados now gaze in awe at the brilliant flower pieces painted in the early seventeenth century by masters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert. But at the time they were painted, these works or art were considered as cheap substitutes for the real flowers. Even Jan van Huysum, the grand master of Dutch flower painting, could rarely command more than 5,000 guilders for a painting. But at auction in Alkmaar, Holland in 1637, a single bulb of the red-and-white tulip "Admiral Liefkens' changed hands for 4,400 guilders.

Roaming through Asia, India, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the author tells how the tulip arrived from Turkey and took the whole of Western Europe by storm. In the petals of the exquisite English florists' tulips, still exhibited in competition by members of the Wakefield Tulip Society in Yorkshire, runs the blood of flowers first grown by John Evelyn in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, the book also features descriptions of eighty wild-species tulips and several hundred garden varieties. 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: #838299 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 388 pages

Amazon.com Review
In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than $3.5 million in today's money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anna 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, where she tells of scrambling across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip. The story of the discovery of this tulip leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful, enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the object of affection--in this case, the tulip--from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul in the 18th century to its present cultivation by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way, incredible stories of people's investments in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of a unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colors are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant but produces its gorgeous hues. The tulipomania that 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 colors imaginable. 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 Publishers Weekly
This splendidly extravagant history is only the latest example of how far an obsession with Queen Tulipa can lead. Pavord (The Flowering Year), the gardening correspondent for the Independent, searched the world's libraries and archives and trekked over war-torn mountainsides to put together an astonishing bouquet of economic and cultural lore, grand historic trends and horticultural exotica. Her witty, frighteningly erudite story starts in Turkey, where Sultans of old held nightly entertainments in gardens lit by mirrored lanterns and required guests to dress in colors to match the tulips. Holland of 1634-1637 saw the famous Tulipomania, during which a single bulb could be traded for the price of the most expensive house in Amsterdam. Seventeenth-century French ladies of fashion wore tulips like jewels (and paid as much for them), and monographists puzzled endlessly over why plain blossoms could suddenly transform themselves into feathered and flamed curiosities. As for Enlightenment England, supposedly sensible people were not immune to the rage, and burgeoning florists' societies were dedicated to growing the flower in the island's wet and clammy soil. Though this isn't a how-to manual, gardeners will appreciate the encyclopedic descriptions of wild species and garden varieties of tulips. Lastly, the sumptuous illustrations covering five centuries of tulip-inspired art and artifacts will dazzle browsers and botanists alike. About much more than a lovely flower, this book will give readers a panoramic eyeful of culture, aesthetics, politics and economics?in short, the spectrum of human endeavor as revealed in the passage of the tulip through history. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Pavord (The New Kitchen Garden, DK, 1996) has clearly been touched by some of the madness that appears throughout the history of the tulip, and her simple title belies the complexity of the story she tells. She traces the fascination for this flower from the first mania for its use in 14th-century Turkey to its evolution as a common garden flower. Using contemporary sources, which also supply some of the lavish illustrations, she documents the tulip's introduction to Western Europe in the 15th century. She also tells the personal stories of the gardeners who devoted their lives and fortunes to developing new varieties. The tulip's mysterious habit of "breaking" and developing new forms and colors was the basis for speculative crazes, first with the Dutch in the 17th century and then later the English and French, since the gardener who grew a desirable new variety could make a fortune. The second half of the book is a comprehensive listing and description of all tulip species as well as some of the 2600 varieties of garden tulips still in general cultivation. Pavord's lively history is recommended for all gardening collections.ADaniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A simply beautiful coffee table book and alas, quite dull !
The packaging of this volume is simply beautiful as are the lavish illustrations. However,the book which promises a facinating tale is in truth quite dull. Anna Pavord is simply too carried away with the botanty of her subject and gives just a glimpse into the human maelstrom that surrounded the tulip. More story telling and 'human interest' anecdotes would have been appreciated.

Interesting,but heavy.
Ms.Pavord certainly does love her tulips - the narrative is strewn with latin names for every variety of tulip.
Originally from the middle-east and very different to most other flowers, the discovery of strange multi-coloured hybrids that appeared spontaneously kept nurserymen occupied for years looking for the perfect specimen. This led to an outrageous inflation in the price, people selling their homes to buy one bulb!

Written in a style that fails to hold one's attention, there is perhaps a tad more botanical detail than is necessary for the layman, but when one considers that this is the second book - a corollary to a scholarly exercise - on tulips, it is surprising that so little jargon is used.
Very informative though lacking in story-telling. ***.

The Tulip
This book, generally touted as 'the definitive book' on tulips, is somewhat disappointing. More interesting historical information exists on tulipomania and tulip fever. Particularly irksome is the prevalence of passages in French with no English translations. Come on, Ms Pavord, we aren't all academics schooled in French! I thought information on the discovery of the virus that causes tulips to 'break' should have been included: so much has been written already about tulip fever through the 16th and 17th centuries that to continue the history to the 1920s, when the cause of breaking tulips was discovered, would have rounded out the picture nicely. But we only receive a vague reference here and there. Considering also that the latter part of the book concerns species and hybrid tulips, more photographs would have been helpful. One description sounds much like another after a while.