Days and Hours in a Garden

Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825-1916) was born in Scotland, the youngest daughter of a wealthy, land-owning family. She found an outlet for her lifelong love of nature and early interest in sketching and painting writing and illustrating books. Because, at the time, it was considered unladylike for women of her social status to have a career, she began with children's books, always signing her books and illustrations E.V.B. Her first book, Child's Play, was published in 1851, and she went on to become one of the most successful women illustrators of the Victorian era, contributing to works by some of the well-known authors at the time, as well as writing and illustrating her own books and articles. After her husband's retirement, the family moved to Huntercombe Manor in Buckinghamshire where she recreated the gardens. Days and Hours in a Garden (1884) is a collection of essays chronicling that garden through the year, with recollections of the changes that had been made to the grounds of the old manor house. Eleanor Vere Boyle wrote other gardening books in the later years of her long career, but Days and Hours in a Garden remains her most popular.