3 Free eBooks - April 2013

The Internet has a growing number of online books…and many of them are free. This is my monthly post highlighting 3 that I have enjoyed most this past month.

Gray, Asa. The Forest Trees of North America. Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution. 1891. This is really the plates prepared for a book. The work was done between 1849 and 1859. It is available in PDF form here. The first three images hooked me for the rest of the volume: magnolias and tulip polar. The tulip poplar in our back yard is just getting ready to bloom…and the image captures the look of the tree quite well.

Redoute, Pierre Joseph. Les Roses. Paris, De L’Imprimerie de Firmin Didot. 1824. There are actually three volumes available on the Internet Archive: 1817, 1821, and 1824. All three contain pages and pages of botanical prints of roses. I was prompted to look for these books when I saw a reference to them in May Theilgaard Watts’ Reading the Landscape of Europe.

Sale, Edith Dabney Tunis (editor for James River Garden Club, Richmand). Historic Gardens of Virginia. Richmond, William Byrd Press. 1923. Available from the Internet Archive here. The book includes the birds-eye view of many gardens as well as a few vistas from ground level. It is tempting to see how many of these gardens still exist!