Home Page Coming Soon
Product Category: Top -> ->

Angel Dorothy: How an American Progressive Came to Devon

Author: Jane Brown
Illustrator:
Retail Price: $55.00
Betabooks Price $44.00
ISBN: 9781783523146
Format: Hardback
Published: March 2017
Published By: Random House Australia
Stock Availability
Titles that are READY TO SHIP will be sent from our warehouse within 2 business days while stocks last. Click here for more details.

Temporarily out of stock Available to order
Temporarily out of stock
 
SAVE $11.00  (20.0%) 
Quantity:
 

Product Description

Angel Dorothy is the inspiring biography of a formidable woman- wealthy American heiress Dorothy Elmhirst, who poured her considerable resources into founding Dartington Hall in 1925. What started as a progressive school rapidly transformed into a magnet for artists, architects, writers, philosophers and musicians, creating an exceptional centre for British cultural life. It was at Dartington in Devon that the Labour Party's post-war manifesto was written and the Arts Council was conceived. Born in Washington, DC, into the influential Whitney family, Dorothy was a national darling- bells rang, flags flew and the American Navy's new fast tugboat was named Dorothy. Orphaned at seventeen, she started giving away her inheritance at eighteen and buried herself in social and political work. She maintained her status as an unmarried woman until she fell in love with and married her first husband, Willard Straight, in 1911. Following Willard's untimely death, Dorothy worked herself into a breakdown trying to fulfil his wishes. She recovered with the help of Leonard Elmhirst, an Englishman who shared her liberal beliefs; they married and moved to England in 1925 to start what would become Dartington Hall. In this vividly told biography, Jane Brown follows Dorothy from one side of the Atlantic to the other, a journey Dorothy made one hundred times to spread her political beliefs, her passion for education and her support of the arts for all. She traces the evolution of Dartington, from its restoration to its farming and forestry projects, and to its time as a home for the period's greatest artists and intellectuals.Angel Dorothy is the inspiring biography of a formidable woman- wealthy American heiress Dorothy Elmhirst, who poured her considerable resources into founding Dartington Hall in 1925. What started as a progressive school rapidly transformed into a magnet for artists, architects, writers, philosophers and musicians, creating an exceptional centre for British cultural life. It was at Dartington in Devon that the Labour Party's post-war manifesto was written and the Arts Council was conceived. Born in Washington, DC, into the influential Whitney family, Dorothy was a national darling- bells rang, flags flew and the American Navy's new fast tugboat was named Dorothy. Orphaned at seventeen, she started giving away her inheritance at eighteen and buried herself in social and political work. She maintained her status as an unmarried woman until she fell in love with and married her first husband, Willard Straight, in 1911. Following Willard's untimely death, Dorothy worked herself into a breakdown trying to fulfil his wishes. She recovered with the help of Leonard Elmhirst, an Englishman who shared her liberal beliefs; they married and moved to England in 1925 to start what would become Dartington Hall. In this vividly told biography, Jane Brown follows Dorothy from one side of the Atlantic to the other, a journey Dorothy made one hundred times to spread her political beliefs, her passion for education and her support of the arts for all. She traces the evolution of Dartington, from its restoration to its farming and forestry projects, and to its time as a home for the period's greatest artists and intellectuals.
Jane Brown is the author of seventeen books on varied subjects, including Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Jekyll, Edwin Lutyens, Henrietta Luxborough and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, and the critically-acclaimed classic Gardens of a Golden Afternoon. All of her earlier books inform Dorothy. Jane has lectured in the UK and in America and enjoyed a Harvard fellowship for her biography of the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand (1995). She has also curated exhibitions and written garden histories for three Cambridge colleges.
ISBN: 9781783523146
Number of Pages: 384
Format: Hardback
Reading Level:
Published Date: 15-Mar-2017
Dimensions (mm): 0x0mm
Publisher: Random House Australia

New Releases