Alicia Amherst
| Alicia Amherst | |
|---|---|
| Born | Alicia Margaret Tyssen Amherst 30 July 1865 Poole, Dorset, England |
| Died | 14 September 1941 (aged 76) Poole, Dorset, England |
| Pen name | Mrs. Evelyn Cecil Lady Rockley of Lytchett Heath Baroness Rockley |
| Occupation | horticulturist, botanist, writer |
| Language | English |
| Subject | horticulture, gardening history |
| Notable works | The History of Gardening in England (1896) |
| Spouse | Evelyn Cecil, 1st Baron Rockley |
| Relatives | William Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney (father) |
Alicia Margaret Tyssen Amherst (30 July 1865 – 14 September 1941) was an English horticulturist, botanist, and author of the first scholarly account of English gardening history.
Alicia Amherst was born in 1865 in Poole, Dorset, one of seven daughters of William Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney, who was later the Conservative Member of Parliament for West Norfolk. Her mother, Margaret Susan Mitford, was an avid gardener and gave Amherst her own plot to care for at the age of ten. Her interest in history was spurred by access to her father's large library.
In 1898, she married Evelyn Cecil and gained the second of the names under which she would publish, Mrs Evelyn Cecil. They had three children. Evelyn Cecil, a Conservative Member of Parliament, was knighted and, in 1934, raised to the peerage as Baron Rockley, so she became Lady Rockley of Lytchett Heath and then the dowager Baroness Rockley, two more names under which she would publish.
She died in Poole in 1941.
Amherst became known for her first and still most famous book, The History of Gardening in England (1895), published under the name Alicia M. T. Amherst. Unexpectedly for its author, it was a huge and immediate success. For the second edition, which was contracted within a month of the first, Amherst received ten times the amount she had been offered for the first.
At the time, most gardening books were practical handbooks, and Amherst was the first writer to take a careful look at the history of gardening in England, going back much further in time than other gardening writers did. Indeed, she spearheaded the first wave of writing about Euro-American garden history, with such well-known works as Rose Standish Nichols' English Pleasure Gardens following in 1902 and Marie-Luise Gothein's A History of Garden Art in 1913. More scholarly but less eloquent than her contemporary Gertrude Jekyll, Amherst never became nearly as popular or influential a writer on gardening. But with its meticulous footnotes and exhaustive annotated bibliography, The History of Gardening in England became the authoritative work in its field and remains of value to historians today.
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