Hello and welcome to mark is about to ignore his own rules. Dear Edgar as you may well be aware is covering each of sixty six stories Edgar Alan Poe wrote in order of publication. The Landscape Garden is the thirty seventh of these tales. It was published in September 1842 issue of Snowden’s Ladies Companion, a magazine for women, published by William S Snowden between 1834 and 1844.

The months following the publication of this story saw the same magazine serialize ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ Dear Edgar’s sequel to ‘The Murders on the Rue Morgue’. It could be posited that, though details are sketchy to say the least, that ‘The Landscape Garden’ was given to Snowden because Poe was running late with his second C. Auguste Dupin story and having missed a deadline gave the magazine this story as a place holder. Which is the best you can say for it in many ways.

The Landscape Garden is not even described as a story, but rather as a sketch. It takes us on a tour of a beautifully landscaped garden. In essence it is a piece for descriptive writing that lacks for any real plot as such. Which is part of the problem, as its just not very interesting, this is not what you read Poe for… The other problem is that it isn’t really a finished piece of work. We know this not least because the sketch was to become part of the longer more complete work ‘the Domain of Arnheim’ published five years later.

So the rule I am about to break is this, normally I read each story in this series at least three times. Once without making any notes, just to ‘read the story’ once more to make notes on anything that I may need to mention, and a final time after the piece has been written, just to make sure I am happy with what I have said. This is the same approach I took with Lovecraft project a few years ago, and more or less works, though when a story isn’t great it makes it much more of a chore.

This story however, I have read once, and as I know it is going to be subsumed by the sixty-first story, once on this occasion is enough, indeed once too often.

It is also why this is a relatively should piece, because frankly there is very little to say about it

THE RAVEN IS NEVERMORE…

SHOULD YOU READ IT: No, perhaps if your are a keen gardener…. but no not even then. Wait till ‘The Domain of Arnheim’ as at least that is a complete story

BLUFFERS FACT: The entire of Snowden’s Ladies Companion can be found here at the internet archive in the form of microfilm scans of the original magazines. Yes I went to look and yes it is fascinating. There is a remarkable lack of any perfume adds, advice on how to obtain a better organum, and no fad diets. There is however a couple of pages of sheet music…

In other news, I have concept art for the cover of the book this will all become one day, in a year or so one suspects may be more. It will probably not have this cover but I like it for the moment, opinions on it would not be unwelcome…