A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton

A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton
Kate Colquhoun

A brilliantly conceived biography of Joseph Paxton, horticulturist to the Duke & Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth, architect of the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and one of the greatest unsung heroes of the Victorian AgeIn the nineteenth century, which witnessed a revolution in horticulture and urban planning and architecture, Joseph Paxton, a man with no formal education, strode like a colossus. Head gardener at Chatsworth by the age of twenty-three, and encouraged by the sixth Duke of Devonshire whose patronage soon flourished into the defining friendship of his life, Paxton set about transforming this Derbyshire estate into the greatest garden in England. Visitors there were astonished by the enormous glasshouses and ambitious waterworks he built, the collection of orchids, the largest in all England, the dwarf bananas and the gargantuan lily, the trees and plants brought back from all over the world. Queen Victoria came to marvel and, increasingly, with the development of the railway in which Paxton was also involved, daytrippers from all over the country.It was the Crystal Palace, home of the Great Exhibition in 1851, that secured Paxton's fame. His design, initially doodled on a piece of blotting paper, was the architectural triumph of its time. Two thousand men worked for eight months to complete it. It was six times the size of St Paul's Cathedral, enclosed a space of 18 acres, and entertained six million visitors. By the time of his death fourteen years later, 'the busiest man in England' according to Dickens, was friends with Brunel and Stevenson and in constant demand to design public parks and gardens. His last, seemingly most eccentric project was for a Great Boulevard under glass, a crystal arcade that would connect all the main railway termini in London.Drawing on exclusive access to Paxton's personal letters, Kate Colquhouns's remarkable biography is a compelling story of a man who typifies the Victorian ideal of self-improvement and a touching portrait of one of that era's great heroes.

KATE COLQUHOUN

A THING IN DISGUISE

THE VISIONARY LIFE OF

JOSEPH PAXTON

DEDICATION (#ulink_1dcc80d8-a679-5033-874f-04b290217788)

For David

EPIGRAPH (#ulink_4c8e7d62-a11c-5b84-9bed-6c9d9bb3e217)

She did not have to be told … that glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but liquid, that an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but will reveal its true liquid nature by having grown fatter at the bottom and thinner at the top, and that even while it is as frail as the ice on a Paramatta puddle, it is stronger under compression than Sydney sandstone, that it is invisible, solid, in short, a joyous and paradoxical thing, as good a material as any to build a life from.

Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

CONTENTS

Cover (#u2d37fe09-7fc3-5fbc-b09b-170ec2ac1ca9)

Title Page (#u947e383b-c8dd-576e-9855-8ce6336510af)

Dedication (#ulink_bfcfdb8f-b99a-5431-9a5a-6cbbec9d8342)

Epigraph (#ulink_2ccde24e-830a-5677-a9d4-702a413c3b23)

Prologue (#ulink_85af1b96-59ea-5d21-8e11-d800087e3f79)

Part 1: Earth

Chapter One (#ulink_5b9a6080-3c8a-5c55-b641-84cbbfbb35a6)

Chapter Two (#ulink_6fc5a297-fbbc-56a5-976a-0b1fc61ebd60)

Chapter Three (#ulink_55d00d68-7dd8-5aeb-9e36-b9de8750e28e)

Chapter Four (#ulink_e21fc0ab-f265-5c10-922f-909a35c3821c)

Chapter Five (#ulink_ae8f8912-a7ff-5553-b9d0-c094175fc243)

Chapter Six (#ulink_5c085f61-71df-50c6-b80b-7f5551e8822b)

Chapter Seven (#ulink_b9da44d0-cf3f-585c-b7e8-eb1e601f90f6)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Part 2: Air

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Part 3: Fire

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

A Note on Currency (#litres_trial_promo)

Select Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Appendix (#litres_trial_promo)