Stephen Bending is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton.

• Introduction; Part I: 1. 'Gladly I leave the town': retirement; 2. 'No way qualified for retirement': disgrace; Part II: 3. Bluestocking gardens: Elizabeth Montagu at Sandleford; 4. Neighbours in retreat: Lady Mary Coke and the Hollands; 5. 'Can you not forgive?' Henrietta Knight at Barrells Hall; 6. 'Though very retired, I am very happy'.

'Bending's wonderful volume, with its integration of literature and garden cultivation, adds significantly to our understanding not only of the ways we can situate women in eighteenth-century garden culture, but also of the mechanisms by which women fashioned their identity in concert with, and sometimes against, their landscape.' Eighteenth-Century Studies

Stephen Bending is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton.

• Introduction; Part I: 1. 'Gladly I leave the town': retirement; 2. 'No way qualified for retirement': disgrace; Part II: 3. Bluestocking gardens: Elizabeth Montagu at Sandleford; 4. Neighbours in retreat: Lady Mary Coke and the Hollands; 5. 'Can you not forgive?' Henrietta Knight at Barrells Hall; 6. 'Though very retired, I am very happy'.

'Bending's wonderful volume, with its integration of literature and garden cultivation, adds significantly to our understanding not only of the ways we can situate women in eighteenth-century garden culture, but also of the mechanisms by which women fashioned their identity in concert with, and sometimes against, their landscape.' Eighteenth-Century Studies

Stephen Bending is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton.

• Introduction; Part I: 1. 'Gladly I leave the town': retirement; 2. 'No way qualified for retirement': disgrace; Part II: 3. Bluestocking gardens: Elizabeth Montagu at Sandleford; 4. Neighbours in retreat: Lady Mary Coke and the Hollands; 5. 'Can you not forgive?' Henrietta Knight at Barrells Hall; 6. 'Though very retired, I am very happy'.

'Bending's wonderful volume, with its integration of literature and garden cultivation, adds significantly to our understanding not only of the ways we can situate women in eighteenth-century garden culture, but also of the mechanisms by which women fashioned their identity in concert with, and sometimes against, their landscape.' Eighteenth-Century Studies