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An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72
by Molly Peacock
Mary Delany was seventy-two years old when she noticed a petal drop from a geranium. In a flash of inspiration, she picked up her scissors and cut out a paper replica of the petal, inventing the art of collage. It was the summer of 1772, in England. During the next ten years she completed nearly a thousand cut-paper botanicals (which she called mosaicks) so accurate that botanists still refer to them. Poet-biographer Molly Peacock uses close-ups of these brilliant collages in The Paper Garden to track the extraordinary life of Delany, friend of Swift, Handel, Hogarth, and even Queen Charlotte and King George III.
How did this remarkable role model for late blooming manage it? After a disastrous teenage marriage to a drunken sixty-one-year-old squire, she took control of her own life, pursuing creative projects, spurning suitors, and gaining friends. At forty-three, she married Jonathan Swift's friend Dr. Patrick Delany, and lived in Ireland in a true expression of midlife love. But after twenty-five years and a terrible lawsuit, her husband died. Sent into a netherland of mourning, Mrs. Delany was rescued by her friend, the fabulously wealthy Duchess of Portland. The Duchess introduced Delany to the botanical adventurers of the day and a bonanza of exotic plants from Captain Cook's voyage, which became the inspiration for her art.
Peacock herself first saw Mrs. Delany's work more than twenty years before she wrote The Paper Garden, but "like a book you know is too old for you," she put the thought of the old woman away. She went on to marry and cherish the happiness of her own midlife, in a parallel to Mrs. Delany, and by chance rediscovered the mosaicks decades later. This encounter confronted the poet with her own aging and gave her - and her readers - a blueprint for late-life flexibility, creativity, and change.
"[Peacock's] hymn to Delany weaves in her own life and discovery of her subject and of course all the viewings of those astonishing orchid 'mosaicks.'" - Publishers Weekly
"A lyrical, meditative rumination on art and the blossoming beauty of self that can be the gift of age and love." - Kirkus Reviews
"The volume itself is a craft object, sumptuously presented and designed, on fine paper, with colophons and decorations, and full-page colour reproductions....The Paper Garden will be everyone's favourite Christmas present this year." - The Globe and Mail
"Like collage itself, The Paper Garden is carefully layered—part fascinating biography...part gripping memoir...accompanied by dozens of vivid photo reproductions. Beautifully written and rendered." - Maclean's
"Complementing her research, Peacock's prose is a delight...A fascinating, uplifting and beautiful book." - The Gazette (Montreal)
"Rich and poetic...Teeming with life - and gorgeous colour illustrations." - Winnipeg Free Press
"The perfect gift for the hardcore book lover [The Paper Garden is] more than a beautiful glimpse at Delany's very interesting life ... a considered and shared contemplation on art and creativity." - January magazine
This information about The Paper Garden was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Molly Peacock is the award-winning author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. Among her other works are How to Read a Poem … and Start a Poetry Circle and a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece. Peacock, a member of the Spalding University brief residency MFA graduate faculty, is currently the general series editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English. A transplanted New Yorker, she lives in Toronto.
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