A Garden In Venice.

London: George Newnes Ltd., 1903. First Edition of this description of the legendary garden created on La Guidecca, Venice's largest island, by British expatriates Frederic Eden, landscape painter and great uncle of the Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, and his wife Carolyn, the sister of horticulturist and garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll. Among the features of the garden was a network of willow pergolas covered with roses and underplanted with Madonna lilies. Irises, lilacs, honeysuckle, jasmine and magnolias also grew there. Il Giardino Eden was frequented by many artists and writers including Marcel Proust, Rainer Marie Rilke, John Singer Sargent, Henry James, and Jean Cocteau, who featured the garden in his poem Souvenir d'un soir d'automne au jardin Eaden (1909). The garden was later owned by Princess Aspasia of Greece, and after her death by Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who left it to grow uncultivated. 8vo. pp. 3 p.l., 135, [1]. 17 plates with tissue guards (incl. frontis.). wood-engraved text illus. & initials. illus. on endpapers. Uncut in original embossed leather in Venetian style (spine ends rubbed, covers slightly bowed, internally fine). elala5942