Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England

Before becoming a landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) visited southern England and Wales during a month-long walking tour, recording his impressions in this richly detailed volume. Charles C. McLaughlin's introduction clarifies the links between Olmsted's developing Picturesque aesthetic, social conscience, and reformer's passion for change, and persuasively argues that Olmsted came to adapt many of the features of the cultivated English countryside in designed landscapes such as New York's Central Park.