The Gardener's Year - Hardcover

by Karel Capek (Author), Robert Weatherall (Translator), Marie Weatherall (Translator)

Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. This edition features lively black and white illustrations by Czech artist Josef Capek and is translated by M. and R. Weatherall.

The Gardener's Year is a charming and light-hearted insight into the life of an amateur gardener. Structured loosely around what to plant, grow or cultivate each month, Karel Capek takes us on a rollicking journey through a year in his own small garden.

From making puddles with an untamable hose to sowing luxuriant weeds instead of grass, Capek reveals how a gardener grows into his surroundings 'spurred on by each new failure'. Subverting the tradition of a 'how to' gardening book, he teaches his readers about the magic of seeds, the perils of planting vegetables and the thrilling surprises of a rock garden. As the year progresses and frail buds turn from flowering stems to drooping bulbs and falling leaves, Capek's small garden buzzes with life, wisdom and humour.

Author Biography

Karel Capek was born in 1890 in Czechoslovakia. He was interested in visual art as a teenager and studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague. During WW1 he was exempt from military service because of spinal problems and became a journalist. He campaigned against the rise of communism and in the 1930s his writing became increasingly anti-fascist. He started writing fiction with his brother Josef, a successful painter, and went on to publish science fiction novels, for which he is best known, as well as detective stories, plays and a singular book on gardening, The Gardener's Year. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times and the Czech PEN Club created a literary award in his name. He died of pneumonia in 1938.