"The House Beautiful Gardening Manual" 1926 STEELE, Fletcher
$750
STEELE, Fletcher
[152] pp.
The Atlantic Monthly Company
1926
12 3/4" x 10"
This was the third and final volume issued by this publisher under the aegis of its "House Beautiful" magazine, which had began publishing in 1896 (The Atlantic Monthly Company took it over in 1913 and was its publisher until it was bought by the Hearst Corporation in 1934). The first two -- "The House Beautiful Building Annual" and "The House Beautiful Furnishing Annual" -- have dated rather badly, and are today largely of historical/reference interest; and they are, consequently, rather common in the marketplace. Not so the "Gardening Manual." Like the others, this one was essentially a product of the magazine's editorial staff (produced by committee, one might say), but is distinguished by bearing the imprimatur of Fletcher Steele, who penned the introductory chapter on garden design, entitled "Design of the Small Place." Steele (1885-1971), who studied under Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and others at Harvard (which in 1900 had instituted the world's first landscape architecture program) and later apprenticed with Warren Manning, opened his own firm in Boston in 1913, and over the course of his career designed and created over 700 gardens.