Unearthing the Secret Garden
The Plants and Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett
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Unearthing the Secret Garden
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Narrated by:
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Jane Copland
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By:
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Marta McDowell
About this listen
“McDowell’s gorgeous book opens an ivy-covered door to new information about one of the world’s most famous authors.”—Angelica Shirley Carpenter, editor of In the Garden
New York Times bestselling author Marta McDowell has revealed the way that plants have stirred some of our most cherished authors, including Beatrix Potter, Emily Dickinson, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. In her latest, she shares a moving account of how gardening deeply inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of the beloved children's classic The Secret Garden.
In Unearthing The Secret Garden, best-selling author Marta McDowell delves into the professional and gardening life of Frances Hodgson Burnett. McDowell paints an unforgettable portrait of a great artist and reminds us why The Secret Garden continues to touch us after more than a century. This deeply moving book is a must-listen for fans of The Secret Garden and anyone who loves the story behind the story.
©2021 Marta McDowell (P)2022 Timber PressListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Affectionate and informative, Unearthing the Secret Garden is not unlike a garden itself, with its smooth lawns of prose and striking shows of illustration and photography. As in Burnett’s enclosures at Maytham Hall, one is forever turning a corner—or, rather, a page—and coming across a fresh vista.” —The Wall Street Journal
“This book is for anyone who loves reading or gardening or exploring the history of places and lives entwined.” —Gardens Illustrated
“Blooming with photos, illustrations, and botanical paintings, McDowell’s gorgeous book opens an ivy-covered door to new information about one of the world’s most famous authors.” —Angelica Shirley Carpenter, editor of In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 88
In this lyrical and poignant story of a wounded man and the three concerned women who seek to heal him, Rebecca West explores the complexity of the mind and its subtle strategies for coping with life's painful realities. Only when Chris has the courage to face one pivotal moment of truth in his married life will he be able to awaken from his boyish fantasy and become, indeed, "every inch a soldier".
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5 out of 5 stars
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a gem
- By beatrice on 09-08-21
By: Rebecca West
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Orlando
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Veronika Hyks
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4 out of 5 stars 86
Virginia Woolf's semi-biographical novel, inspired by her life changing love affair with Vita Sackville-West, takes us on an exhilarating, fantastical roller coaster, tracing 400 years of English history, in the company of her shape-shifting, gender-bending, time-travelling hero Orlando, whose inner conflicts and triumphs challenge our preconceptions of the nature of love, the battle of the sexes, posing socal and metaphysical questions including what we now call climate change.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Strange Inexplicable Tale, Beautifully Narrated.
- By Ilana on 07-24-15
By: Virginia Woolf
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Time Pieces
- A Dublin Memoir
- By: John Banville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.
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5 out of 5 stars
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‘loved it!
- By SandyK on 02-24-24
By: John Banville
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Jacob's Room
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Jacob's Room was the first of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published by the Hogarth Press, founded with her husband, Leonard Woolf, in their home at Hogarth House in Richmond in 1917. It is an episodic tale that attempts to evoke the inner life of Jacob Flanders and his social milieu during the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good listen
- By Cecilie Malling on 03-21-05
By: Virginia Woolf
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Lark Rise
- By: Flora Thompson
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
Lark Rise is Flora Thompson's childhood memories of a north Oxfordshire village, the people who lived and worked in it, and a way of life that has totally disappeared. The story is built around Laura and her brother Edmund, through whose eyes are seen 'old Sally', whose grandfather built the house she lived in before the enclosure of the heathland, children's games, the interaction of village and gentry, and the way in which the seasons governed life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A glimpse...
- By Shananiganians on 05-31-20
By: Flora Thompson
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Sanshiro
- Penguin Classics
- By: Natsume Soseki, Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin
- Narrated by: Andrew Koji
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro's doomed innocence, the novel comes to life. Sanshiro is also penetrating social and cultural commentary.
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3 out of 5 stars
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This story had no point.
- By icelandicponies on 12-30-21
By: Natsume Soseki, and others
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Good Poems
- Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
- By: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and others
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very good, but. . .
- By KSmith on 01-27-11
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
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Pale Fire
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 539
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 455
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Story4 out of 5 stars 456
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An amazing feat for such a unique novel
- By AmazonCustomer on 03-27-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The House of the Seven Gables
- By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 400
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 313
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Story4 out of 5 stars 316
In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family of Salem.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Classic Thriller
- By E. Pearson on 12-03-10
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Crome Yellow
- By: Aldous Huxley
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4 out of 5 stars 137
One of the greatest prose writers and social commentators of the 20th century, Aldous Huxley here introduces us to a delightfully cynical, comic, and severe group of artists and intellectuals engaged in the most free-thinking and modern kind of talk imaginable. Poetry, occultism, ancestral history, and Italian primitive painting are just a few of the subjects competing for discussion among the amiable cast of eccentrics drawn together at Crome, an intensely English country manor.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bloomsbury in a blender, 1922
- By Adeliese Baumann on 01-02-17
By: Aldous Huxley
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The Hero and the Crown
- By: Robin McKinley
- Narrated by: Roslyn Alexander
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 781
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 686
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 695
Uncertain of the past, Aerin-sol, daughter of King Arlbeth, decides to forge her own future by challenging the lashing tongues of the dragon’s fire. Aerin’s proficiency as "the Dragon-slayer" sets her on a quest for the stolen Crown of Damar, believed to be in the hands of rebellious northerners who threaten to destroy the Damarian people and their home forever.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Second only to Blue Sword
- By mkc on 01-18-13
By: Robin McKinley
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The Backyard Parables
- Lessons on Gardening, and Life
- By: Margaret Roach
- Narrated by: Margaret Roach
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
Margaret Roach has been harvesting 30 years of backyard parables - deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper - and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more. After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Writing Distracting Reading
- By Amazon Customer on 02-11-13
By: Margaret Roach
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Emily of New Moon
- The Emily Trilogy, Book 1
- By: L. M. Montgomery
- Narrated by: Megan Follows
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Like Anne, Emily Starr is a quick-witted and imaginative orphan who is sent to live with her two maiden aunts at New Moon Farm after her father dies. Though initially disheartened by her strict and conventional Aunt Elizabeth, Emily slowly grows to love her new family and New Moon Farm. There she makes friends with Ilse Burnley, a tomboy with a blazing temper; quiet, artistic Teddy Kent; and Perry Miller, the hired boy, who Aunt Elizabeth looks down upon because he was born in the impoverished “Stovepipe Town”.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful!!
- By giniareads on 07-01-21
By: L. M. Montgomery
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Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman
- By: Judy Taylor
- Narrated by: Patricia Routledge
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Starting with the publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, in 1902, Beatrix Potter went on to become one of the world’s most successful children’s authors. This biographical audiobook takes the reader through the whole of her life, from her Victorian childhood in London to her final years farming in the Lake District. Regarded as a standard work on Beatrix Potter’s life, this work has been updated regularly to include fresh material that has come to light as interest in Beatrix Potter continues to grow.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!
- By Kimberly on 06-14-17
By: Judy Taylor
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The Story Girl
- By: L. M. Montgomery
- Narrated by: Grace Conlin
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 269
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 222
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 224
Sara Stanley is only 14, but she can weave tales that are impossible to resist. In the charming town of Carlisle, children and grown-ups alike flock from miles around to hear her spellbinding narratives. And when Bev King and his younger brother, Felix, arrive for the summer, they, too, are captivated by the Story Girl.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Spring Always Comes
- By Joseph R on 01-07-10
By: L. M. Montgomery
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The Art of Travel
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 177
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4 out of 5 stars 155
Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Dull, suggestions for better alternatives
- By J. Natael on 08-07-13
By: Alain de Botton
What listeners say about Unearthing the Secret Garden
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amy goodman kiefer
- 12-28-21
If 'the secret Garden' inspired you,
If 'the secret Garden' inspired you, I think you will really appreciate this book and it's deep dive into Frances H. Burnett's life and inspirations.!
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