Robert Morris Copeland
Reprint of the 1859 edition, with a new introduction by William H. Tishler
ASLA Centennial Reprint Series
Published by University of Massachusetts Press in association with LALH
$49.95
To order: www.umass.edu/umpress/fall_08/copeland.htm
tel. 800-537-5487, fax 410-516-6998
“This new edition of Robert Morris Copeland’s Country Life brings an influential classic back into public view. The influence of Robert Morris Copeland and George Perkins Marsh converged in Woodstock, Vermont where Frederick Billings employed Copeland in 1869 to design his estate and begin the process of repairing its badly damaged forested landscape. The Billings’ property, that is today a national park about conservation history and the emergence of a national stewardship ethic, had also been home to Marsh, one of the nation’s first global environmental thinkers.
“Frederick Billings owned a copy of the sixth edition of Copeland’s Country Life (1859) along with his copy of Marsh’s Man and Nature (1864) and the tangible expression of Copeland’s philosophy of “The Useful and the Beautiful” can still be experienced and enjoyed on the reforested slopes
and carriage roads of Mount Tom.” —Rolf Diamant, Superintendent, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park
Robert Morris Copeland (1830-1874) was one of a small number of American landscape practitioners whose written and built work helped establish the foundations for city planning and integrated park systems. As did his colleagues Frederick Law Olmsted and Horace Cleveland, Copeland merged many of the principles of scientific farming with landscape gardening. Although he was short-lived, his accomplishments were substantial. These included his magnum opus, Country Life: A Handbook of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Landscape Gardening, and an influential tract The Most Beautiful City in America: Essay and Plan for the Improvement of the City of Boston. Copeland also left behind several important designs for cemeteries, estates, suburbs, communities, and parks throughout New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. He was also ardent abolitionist and one of the first to argue for the inclusion of African-American soldiers in the Union army and likely helped establish the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the all black brigade depicted in the well-known relief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Shortly after graduating from Harvard in 1851, Copeland formed a partnership with Cleveland, with whom he designed projects throughout New England, including several “rural” cemeteries, Oak Grove (Gloucester, 1854), Sleepy Hollow (Concord, 1855), and Mount Feake (Waltham, 1857). Of special note was the firm’s design for Sleepy Hollow, since many Boston area notables were involved with its inception and were later buried there. Ralph Waldo Emerson served on the Concord Cemetery Board and his aesthetic musings strongly influenced Cleveland and Copeland’s understanding of nature-based design.
In 1859 Copeland published Country Life, which quickly became a bible of scientific farming and landscape gardening, as it incorporated the latest agricultural practices with new engineering methods. Handsomely illustrated with plates and woodcuts, the book sold through six editions. Copeland organized the book into an agricultural year that provided practical and aesthetic advice on a month-by-month basis, according to area. He dedicated the book “to all lovers of nature and to all engaged in cultivating and adorning the earth,” suggesting that a well-managed farm “can expand the mind and ennoble the soul.”
A new introduction by William H. Tishler analyzes the importance of the book to mid-nineteenth century American and also chronicles Copeland’s other important achievements, including his early concept for a metropolitan park system for Boston that foreshadowed Charles Eliot’s ardent efforts by many years. |
