The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72

The Paper Garden is unlike anything else you have ever read. At once a biography of an extraordinary 18th century gentlewoman and a meditation on late-life creativity, it is a beautifully written tour de force from an acclaimed poet. Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700-1788) was the witty, beautiful and talented daughter of a minor branch of a powerful English family. Married off at 16 to a 61-year-old drunken squire to improve the family fortunes, she was widowed by 25, and henceforth had a small stipend and a horror of marriage. She spurned many suitors over the next twenty years, including the powerful Lord Baltimore and the charismatic radical John Wesley. She cultivated a wide circle of friends, including Handel and Jonathan Swift. And she painted, she stitched, she observed, as she swirled in the outskirts of the Georgian court. In mid-life she found love, and married. Upon her beloved husband's death 23 years later, she arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors and, at the age of 72, created a new art form: mixed-media collage, which she called "mosaicks." Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany created an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica.

Peacock, an award-winning poet, has delicately woven parallels in her own life around the story of Mrs. Delany's and, in doing so, has made this biography into a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art.

Gorgeously designed and featuring 35 full-color illustrations, this is a sumptuous and lively book full of fashion and friendships, gossip and politics, letters and love. It's to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.

Molly Peacock is the award-winning author of six volumes of poetry. Her poems have appeared in such leading publications as the New Yorker and the Times Literary Supplement and have been widely anthologized in such volumes as The Oxford Book of American Poetry and The Best of the Best American Poetry. Peacock is the general series editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English and is a member of the graduate faculty of the Spalding University brief residency MFA program.