cover image My Garden CL

My Garden CL

Mary Russell Mitford. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $25 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-395-56473-8

Mitford (1787-1855), friend to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Ruskin, was well known in England as a poet, dramatist and author of several books on country life. As Marsack ( The Cave of Making ), former editorial director of Carcanet Press, points out in her gracefully succinct introduction, Mitford's literary efforts were mainly a means of supporting her spendthrift father and ailing mother. Gardening was her great passion, to which these letters delicately attest. Arranged chronologically, selections progress from high-spirited accounts of hikes through the countryside at a vigorous age 25 to Mitford's musings on flower arrangements as an invalid sexagenarian. She was a keen observer of detail; her joy in experiencing nature is timelessly infectious. British painter Kay's abundant line drawings and vivacious watercolors for the most part provide a suitably lyrical counterpoint to the text. (Oct.)