Review by Choice Review
This final entry in the multi-volume edition of the writings of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was begun in 1956 as a dissertation by Charles Capen McLaughlin, envisioned as a series in a project taken on by the National Association for Olmsted Parks at http://www.olmsted.org/, and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Charles Eliot Beveridge was enlisted as associate editor in 1973, becoming series editor with volume four. The last three volumes appeared after McLaughlin's death in 2005. Originally planned as seven volumes, the project has now reached nine, plus three planned supplemental volumes--the first published in 1977, the latest in 2015. The intent of this ambitious undertaking was to make available, with full annotations, the best of Olmsted's letters, unpublished writings, and periodical articles. The published documents were selected from more than 60,000 separate items authored between 1838 and 1903, held in the Library of Congress's collection of Olmsted papers or other repositories, including the Olmstead Archives at Fairsted in Brookline, MA. Many scholars have contributed subject expertise or editorial savoir faire over decades. Debts are also owed for good will and willingness to make materials accessible, to the Olmsted family and to many others explicitly acknowledged. In addition to a detailed biographical introduction, each volume includes a chronology, index, and black-and-white illustrations. Documents are presented chronologically, accompanied by extensive notes, with the occasional insertion of related texts written later. Olmsted's career is divided into his formative years (1822-52, vol. 1, published 1977); the South (1852-57, vol. 2, 1981); his design of Central Park (1857-61, vol. 3, 1983); the Civil War and US Sanitary Commission years (1861-63, vol. 4, 1986); the California frontier (1863-18, vol. 5, 1990); the Olmsted-Vaux partnership (1865-74, vol. 6, 1992); major parks commissions (1874-82, vol. 7, 2007); early Boston years (1882-90, vol. 8, 2013); and, with this release, the final projects (1890-95, vol. 9, 2015). Some volumes (3-5) are no longer in print, and others (6, supplement 1) are available as print-on-demand titles; hopefully, the set may one day be reissued in its entirety. An indispensable resource for landscape architecture and American civilization collections. Summing Up: Essential. Academic and general readers; practicing landscape professionals. --Micheline Nilsen, Indiana University South Bend
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
