Of oak and smoke, inter alia

Abstract

The Writings of John Evelyn (edited and typeset by Guy de la Bédoyère). Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1995. Pp. 435, £39.50. ISBN 0-85115-631-2 Since 1818, John Evelyn has been chiefly remembered for his Diary , which then shed new light on the political, social and practical affairs of seventeenth-century England. That edition, intended to show how sober, temperate, useful and pious a ‘Cavalier’ might be, was reprinted many times. In 1955 the complete text as Evelyn left it was published by E.S. de Beer and in 1994 G. de la Bédoyère published a selection from the full modern text. Evelyn was, all his life, an indefatigable, prolific and long-winded writer, whether on politics, religion, natural history or personal subjects, an inveterate employer of classical quotations, who seems never to have disciplined his prose. He was also an industrious translator, earlier from Latin, later mainly from French, often on gardening subjects. The present volume reprints nine works, dating from 1659 to 1666, although Evelyn never stopped writing and revised his earlier works in later editions.