The Loudons and the Gardening Press. A Victorian Cultural Industry. 2014. (The Nineteenth Century Series). illus. XVI, 278 p. gr8vo. Hardcover.

Through close readings of individual serials and books and archival work on the publication history of the Gardeners Magazine (1826-44) Sarah Dewis examines the significant contributions John and Jane Webb Loudon made to the gardening press and democratic discourse. Vilified during their lifetimes by some sections of the press, the Loudons were key players in the democratization of print media and the development of the printed image. Both offered women readers a cultural alternative to the predominantly literary and classical culture of the educated English elite. In addition, they were innovatory in emphasizing the value of scientific knowledge and the acquisition of taste as a means of eroding class difference. As well as the Gardeners Magazine,

Dewis focuses on the lavish eight-volume Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (1838), an encyclopaedia of trees andshrubs, and On the Laying Out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries (1843), arguing that John Loudon was a radical activist who reconfigured gardens in the public sphere as a landscape of enlightenment and as a means of social cohesion. Her book is important in placing the Loudons publications in the context of the history of the book, media history, garden history, urban social history, history of education, nineteenth-century radicalism and womens journalism.

Contents: Introduction/ Who are the Gardeners? / The radical origins of the Gardeners Magazine/ John Loudon as editor/ Image and text in the Gardeners Magazine/ National discourse: John Loudon, activism and landscape; Domestic discourse: John Loudon, periodicals for women and the book manufactory/ Jane Webb Loudon, editor and author of garden publications/ Conclusion/Bibliography of works cited / Index.