Hamish Riley-Smith

SENNET, A.R. Garden Cities in Theory and Practice. Volume I, II. London Bemrose and Sons Ltd 1905

2 volumes, thick octavo, very fine publishers green cloth, bevelled edges, upper covers with thick gilt rules, spines and covers lettered and embossed in gilt, xivpp + 557pp; xipp + 559-1404pp + 12pp adverts; numerous illustrations and plans throughout, some folding, a review copy with printed presentation slip of the publisher’s loosely inserted in volume I, a very fine copy.

First edition of Sennett’s classic and near-encyclopaedic work on Garden Cities – a radical and visionary alternative to Ebenzer Howard’s Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform of 1898. Sennett’s book remains one of the most important and substantial on the subject. He includes references to Bournville and Port Sunlight in England, Serrieres in Switzerland and Agneta Garden Village in Holland, Krupp’s Garden Village in Essen and Pullman’s at Lake Calumet near Chicago. In volume I he compares James Buckingham’s ‘ideal city’ with Ebenezer Howard’s plans for the ‘garden city’ at Letchworth with his own proposals including the density of population, cost of street construction, area of each dwelling house, plans for an industrial zone, and size of gardens. The chapters in volume I are ‘On the laying-out of Garden Cities’, ‘Proposal for a Plan of First Garden City’, ‘Garden City Dwellings and other buildings’ and ‘Life ina Garden City’; volume II “The sociological aspect”, “Garden City Industries”, “Locomotion, urban and inter-urban”, “Garden Cities in their relation to agriculture” and “The potentialities of applied science in a Garden City”. Sennett writes in his introduction that the Garden City “would indeed be a spot of country upon which the dweller could carry on his industrial and mercantile pursuits as in a town, a spot of country the advantages and beauties of which he could enjoy concurrently with his business and his labours”.

£750

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