August 15, 2024

The Nature Notes & Country Diary of An Edwardian Lady Books

Nicole books 6 Comments

I first heard about The Country Diary of An Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden a few years ago from my sister. She’d seen it on social media and thought it looked like an interesting, and beautiful, book. Earlier this year, I saw a copy come up on Poshmark for a good price, so I purchased it for her for a Christmas gift. Once it arrived, of course I started reading it, in secret, and fell in love with it, realizing that I was now going to need to get a copy for myself! I kept an eye on Poshmark, but nothing else came up, and then one day I was browsing in the local thrift store and found a copy for $1.00! That might have been the best thrift store treasure I’ve ever come across. Now, with two copies, I decided I couldn’t wait 6 more months until Christmas, so I gave it to her that day! So, if you aren’t familiar with this series of books, what is the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady?

Edith Holden was an artist born in 1871 in a village called Mosely, near Birmingham, England. She attended art school, and worked successfully as an illustrator for children’s books during her lifetime, but interestingly the work she is most known for is her private sketchbook from the year 1906 which was discovered and published posthumously in 1977. There are three books in this “grouping”; it’s not really a series, but they are all similar in size and style.

The first is the aforementioned Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, which is a facsimile of her sketchbook, including pages of notes, poetry and quotes written in her hand, as well as botanical and animal watercolour artworks, illustrating the things she saw during the year in the county of Warwickshire (and a jaunt to Scotland). The book chronicles the months, with seasonally appropriate holidays, poetry and “sayings” written at the beginning of each month.

Then she moves into her daily nature observations, illustrated with watercolours. Some of the illustrations are diagram-like, and others are like scenes. There are still vintage copies, from the 1970’s floating around for sale, as well as 100 year reproduction editions. Both of those editions have a dust jacket and a burgundy and cream book binding underneath, with gold embossed lettering. The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady is also still in print by Rizzoli today, with a different binding from the original. This book is the most famous, and I must say having read her other one, it is also my favourite.

The second book is the Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady, which actually was compiled in 1905, the year before Country Diary. This was almost a test run of her idea of creating a Nature book, since she didn’t write the poetry and observations in her distinctive hand like in the Country Diary. Her writing was not as legible in this sketchbook, so was published in 1989 with typed text instead. This was a good solution for legibility, but not as good for chronology. Sometimes the notes and the illustrations ended up being on different pages, so there was a fair amount of flipping back and forth as I read it. There was also a lot of blank space and margins on the pages with poetry, unlike in the Country Diary where she fills the pages to the edges, and often has illustrations nestled amongst the text. Some of the information, such as the feast days and history of each month is repeated in both books, but even though that information is the same, they are still two different books, with different poems, daily observations and artworks.

There are some beautiful paintings in the Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady. I don’t own this one, but requested it from the library (it arrived after I’d taken the other photos, which is why the photos have a different background!). I am adding this beautiful book to my wish list. I don’t think this book is still in print, and it seems a bit more rare than Country Diary, but I still see it for sale secondhand online. The edition I got from the library was from 1989 and featured a green cover embossed with simple gold text. Unfortunately the dust jacket was plastic wrapped and taped on, so I couldn’t photograph the entire book cover.

Update: As of September 2025, Nature Notes has just been brought back again in print by Rizzoli publishing in a coordinating binding to their Country Diary editions. You can see more here.

The final book in this series is the biography of Edith Holden, called The Edwardian Lady, by Ina Taylor. This is by far the prettiest book binding of the three! It has a lovely green cover, embossed with vines and gold letters! As far as I can tell, this one is also out of print, but still available secondhand. I loved reading this biography of Edith and her family. She grew up in a well-to-do manufacturing family which encouraged the creative arts. Several of her siblings also attended the Birmingham art school and became artists and illustrators for children’s books and magazines.

She also worked with oil paints and exhibited 50 paintings over her life. She was also, unsurprisingly, a member of the National Council for Animals’ Welfare and illustrated a calendar for them in 1907. She had an interesting life but died tragically at the age of 49.

I enjoyed reading this book, because so many of her other artworks from her lifetime were included, as well as some of the work of her siblings, alongside family photographs. I’d like to add this one to my collection not only because it would be a complete “set”, but because it’s also so pretty!

So, there are the three books about and by Edith Holden. Have you read any of them? Which is your favourite?