William Shenstone and the Leasowes
The English landscape garden in transition, c.1740-1763

Ralph Harrington
BA (Lond.), MSt (Oxon.), DPhil (Oxon.)

The landscape garden at the Leasowes, near Halesowen in the English west midlands,was created by the poet William Shenstone (1714-63), and was one of the most celebrated gardens of the eighteenth century. These pages offer a historical, cultural and aesthetic exploration of the garden at the Leasowes and of the life of its creator.

These pages contain the complete text of my Master’s thesis, originally written at the University of Oxford in 1993-4. The work has not been updated or altered, and so does not take account of recent work on Shenstone or garden history. The Appendix section below contains updated bibliographical information, and a list of relevant links.

Contents

Introduction Read>>

Chapter I - A truly Arcadian farm: the Leasowes explored Read>>

Chapter II - Nature dressed and redressed: the Leasowes and garden theory Read>>

Chapter III - Conclusion Read>>

Bibliography Read>>

List of maps Read>>

Appendix: updated bibliographical information and list of relevant links Read>>

Next>>

© Ralph Harrington 1994 and 2006. This work is protected by copyright and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Licence. This means that you can copy, distribute and transmit this work freely as long as it is attributed to the original author; you may not alter, transform or build upon this work; and you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

Citation information
Please note that proper attribution is required by the licence conditions pertaining to this work, as well as being good scholarly practice. For preference, please cite this thesis as if referring directly to the printed version.
To cite print version: Ralph Harrington, William Shenstone and the Leasowes: The English Landscape Garden in Transition, c.1740-1763 (unpub. M.St. thesis, University of Oxford, 1994)
Location of this section (stable URL): http://www.greycat.org/papers/shen0.htm

A note on plagiarism
Whatever you do with this essay, do it as far as possible in your words, not in mine, and where you do use my words, acknowledge them as mine. Not to do so is to risk committing plagiarism.

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