The Language of Flowers: A History (Victorian Literature and Culture Series) - Softcover

Seaton, Beverly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813929423 ISBN 13: 9780813929422

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2015

Synopsis

The author traces the phenomenon of ascribing sentimental meaning to floral imagery from its beginnings in Napoleonic France through its later transformations in England and America. At the heart of the book is a depiction of what the three most important flower books from each of the countries divulge about the period and the respective cultures. Seaton shows that the language of flowers was not a single and universally understood correlation of flowers to meanings that men and women used to communicate in matters of love and romance. The language differs from book to book, country to country.

To place the language of flowers in social and literary perspective, the author examines the nineteenth-century uses of flowers in everyday life and in ceremonies and rituals and provides a brief history of floral symbolism. She also discusses the sentimental flower book, a genre especially intended for female readers. Two especially valuable features of the book are its table of correlations of flowers and their meanings from different sourcebooks and its complete bibliography of language of flower titles.

This book will appeal not only to scholars in Victorian studies and women's studies but also to art historians, book collectors, museum curators, historians of horticulture, and anyone interested in nineteenth-century popular culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Beverly Seaton is Assistant Professor of English at the Ohio State University at Newark.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0813929423
• ISBN 13: 9780813929422
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 234