In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than $3.5 million in today's money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anna Pavord's wonderful book on this most seductive of flowers.

Pavord's passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, where she tells of scrambling across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip. The story of the discovery of this tulip leads into Pavord's extraordinary history of this beautiful, enigmatic flower. As with all the best love stories, Pavord's is told from the perspective of the object of affection--in this case, the tulip--from its adoption by the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul in the 18th century to its present cultivation by the Wakefield Tulip Society.

Along the way, incredible stories of people's investments in the flower emerge, the result, as Pavord explains, of a unique feature of the tulip. Its variegated colors are produced by a small parasitic aphid, which weakens the plant but produces its gorgeous hues. The tulipomania that gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colors imaginable. Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects. Buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again. --Jerry Brotton

From Publishers Weekly
This splendidly extravagant history is only the latest example of how far an obsession with Queen Tulipa can lead. Pavord (The Flowering Year), the gardening correspondent for the Independent, searched the world's libraries and archives and trekked over war-torn mountainsides to put together an astonishing bouquet of economic and cultural lore, grand historic trends and horticultural exotica. Her witty, frighteningly erudite story starts in Turkey, where Sultans of old held nightly entertainments in gardens lit by mirrored lanterns and required guests to dress in colors to match the tulips. Holland of 1634-1637 saw the famous Tulipomania, during which a single bulb could be traded for the price of the most expensive house in Amsterdam. Seventeenth-century French ladies of fashion wore tulips like jewels (and paid as much for them), and monographists puzzled endlessly over why plain blossoms could suddenly transform themselves into feathered and flamed curiosities. As for Enlightenment England, supposedly sensible people were not immune to the rage, and burgeoning florists' societies were dedicated to growing the flower in the island's wet and clammy soil. Though this isn't a how-to manual, gardeners will appreciate the encyclopedic descriptions of wild species and garden varieties of tulips. Lastly, the sumptuous illustrations covering five centuries of tulip-inspired art and artifacts will dazzle browsers and botanists alike. About much more than a lovely flower, this book will give readers a panoramic eyeful of culture, aesthetics, politics and economics?in short, the spectrum of human endeavor as revealed in the passage of the tulip through history. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Pavord (The New Kitchen Garden, DK, 1996) has clearly been touched by some of the madness that appears throughout the history of the tulip, and her simple title belies the complexity of the story she tells. She traces the fascination for this flower from the first mania for its use in 14th-century Turkey to its evolution as a common garden flower. Using contemporary sources, which also supply some of the lavish illustrations, she documents the tulip's introduction to Western Europe in the 15th century. She also tells the personal stories of the gardeners who devoted their lives and fortunes to developing new varieties. The tulip's mysterious habit of "breaking" and developing new forms and colors was the basis for speculative crazes, first with the Dutch in the 17th century and then later the English and French, since the gardener who grew a desirable new variety could make a fortune. The second half of the book is a comprehensive listing and description of all tulip species as well as some of the 2600 varieties of garden tulips still in general cultivation. Pavord's lively history is recommended for all gardening collections.ADaniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art Lib., New YorkCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New Yorker
"Visually stunning"

The Wall Street Journal, Mac Griswold
Ms. Pavord offers swift little bios on eccentric or heartbreaking tulips fanciers. And her chapter on species tulips is timely, given the interest in the wilder looking forms that are better suited to today's more naturalistic gardens than the prim cultivars seen in mass plantings in parks.... [a] fascinating book.

From Kirkus Reviews
A disarming, captivating history of the tulipa byzantine story rich in subtexts, from Pavord, gardening correspondent for the Independent in England (The Flowering Year, not reviewed, etc.). ``What is this Toolip? A well complexion'd stink, an ill favour wrapt up in pleasant colours,'' muttered a contemptuous English gardener a few centuries back. He stood pretty much alone, as Pavord makes delightfully evident, for long before their introduction into western Europe during the 16th century, tulips were the hottest floral ticket around. Pavord details the background of the tulip, which is as flamboyant as the bloom itself: It is wild to a swath that cuts from Istanbul to Samarkand to Tienshan; it is feathered or flamed, nipped or spidery; a shape-shifter, it is drab one year, then wildly sexy the next, flushed with satiny green. The flower was an Ottoman fixation, an ever-present motif from common tile work to Suleyman's armor; it spawned floral societiesand poetry, artwork, and debate300 years before the Dutch laid eyes on it. And tulips instantly besotted western Europe, arriving just in time to cash in on the Age of Curiosities, when the rare became stylish overnight. Pavord charts (and illustrates with 150 color plates) its rise to fame in France, England, Belgium, and the Netherlands; she traces the flower's appearance in paintings, literature, and botanical tracts; discusses how it commanded absurd prices and became an object of satire; details the tulips abrupt fall from grace, only to be rescued from the aristocratic scrap heap by hobby florists. Clearly, Pavord is smitten herself. Like the best of monomaniacs, she engages readers with her obsession and knows how to apply tongue to cheek: Any tulip worth inspection has ``the need for a good shape and a good bottom.'' This floral portrait is alive with wonder; even the concluding catalogue raisonn of species is a work of passion. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"Splendidly extravagant history...an astonishing bouquet of economic and cultural lore, grand historic trends and horticultural exotica." --Publishers Weekly

"Visually stunning" --New Yorker

"Fascinating and sumptuous...an epic drama, a true tale that spans continents and centuries, shows humankind at its worst and its best, with heroes and villains galore." --Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"A wondrous account... remarkable." --Seattle Weekly

"Verbally and visually ravishing book." --House & Garden

"The Tulip reads more like an adventure story, written against a backdrop of a 16th-and 17th-century Europe..."--Desert Sun


Review
"Splendidly extravagant history...an astonishing bouquet of economic and cultural lore, grand historic trends and horticultural exotica." --Publishers Weekly

"Visually stunning" --New Yorker

"Fascinating and sumptuous...an epic drama, a true tale that spans continents and centuries, shows humankind at its worst and its best, with heroes and villains galore." --Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"A wondrous account... remarkable." --Seattle Weekly

"Verbally and visually ravishing book." --House & Garden

"The Tulip reads more like an adventure story, written against a backdrop of a 16th-and 17th-century Europe..."--Desert Sun

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The Tulip a meticulously researched and delightfully descriptive history of a flower that, as far back as the 13th century, has not only been inspiring poetry and drama but also charting political upheavals, illuminating social behavior, mirroring economic booms and busts, and plotting the ebb and flow of religious persecutions.

Throughout The Tulip, Anna Pavord, gardening correspondent for Britain's The Independent and the author of The Flowering Year and Gardening Companion, traces the history of the flower as best she can. She confesses that it is a particularly rebellious and "unruly genus," continually slipping "out from under the careful parameters laid by botanists and taxonomists" -- and perhaps historians as well. Her sources are the historical writings of each period as well as the art, tapestries, and other items on which the tulip has been depicted through the ages.

Although tulips were praised by Persian poets as early as the 13th century, they did not become the celebrated emblems they are today until the 15th and 16th centuries under the Ottoman Empire. Mesmerized by the splendid colors of the tulip and its mysterious ability to change colors and patterns, sultans began compulsively planting the brilliant flowers in gardens throughout Constantinople and in their own royal pleasure gardens and orchards. With the help of travelers, royal ambassadors from Europe, religious refugees, and curious botanists, the flowers were soon flourishing throughout Europe, especially in Holland, and eventually in the United States.

Pavord supplements her tribute to the tulip with full chapters on each variety, including height, appearance, region, origin, and planting instructions, as well as a chapter on garden tulips. She also includes a detailed "Chronology of Tulips."

Lara Webb is a freelance editor and author of The Best Friend's Guide to Getting Married.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Tulip is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has made men mad. Greed, desire, anguish, devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the world-wide phenomenon it is today. The US alone imports three thousand million tulip bulbs each year, Germany and France even more. Why did the tulip dominate so many lives through so many centuries in so many countries? The author, a self-confessed tulipomaniac, has spent six years looking for answers. No other flower has ever carried so much cultural baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, the book also features descriptions of 80 wild-species tulips and several hundred garden varieties.

SYNOPSIS

"One That Scatters and Blooms," "One That Changes Owners," "Those That Burn the Heart," "The Roman's Spear" -- all are names for that most charming and immediately recognizable flower, the tulip. Anna Pavord, gardening correspondent for Britain's The Independent and the author of The Flowering Year and Gardening Companion, among other books, admits readily her obsession with the flower in The Tulip, a meticulously researched and delightfully descriptive history of the tulip.

FROM THE CRITICS

Economist Review

It took seven years of travel and research to create this magnifcent history of the genus Tulipa, its 1,200 species and the financial madness it once inspired.

Emma Tennant - Literary Review

Anna Pavord has written a magnum opus. She has taken up the challenge of writing about every aspect of the extraordinary genus tulipa. The search for truth has led her into some fascinating byways of history.

Anne Raver - The New York Times

This is no dry, botanical tome, though its botany is gracefully woven into the tale. The Tulip reads more like an adventure story.

Richard Rudgley

...[W]ritten by a modern high priestess of the cult [and] destined to achieve Biblical status....Although Pavord is a willing victim of tulipomania her book does not evoke the crazed world of fanatics... —London Review of Books

House & Garden