Hunt, John Dixon 1936–

PERSONAL: Born January 18, 1936, in Gloucester, England; son of Sydney H. and Marjorie (Dixon) Hunt; married Phyllis Marie DuBois (an academic librarian), February, 1973 (divorced); children: two. Education: Attended English School of Languages, La Tour de Peliz, Switzerland, 1954; King's College, Cambridge, B.A. (with honors), 1957, M.A., 1961; attended University of Michigan, 1959–60; University of Bristol, Ph.D., 1964. Hobbies and other interests: Travel, walking.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Landscape Architecture, 119 Meyerson Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6311. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, instructor in English, 1960–62; University of Exeter, Exeter, England, assistant lecturer, 1962–63, lecturer in English, 1963–64; University of York, Heslington, England, lecturer in English, 1964–75, deputy provost of Langwith College, 1971–72; University of London, Bedford College, London, England, reader, 1975–79, professor of English, 1979–82; University of Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands, professor of English, 1983–85; University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, professor of English and curator, 1985–88; Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, senior fellow in landscape architecture, 1985, director, 1988–91; Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, VA, academic advisor, 1991–94; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, professor of landscape architecture and department chair, 1994–. Johns Hopkins University, visiting professor, 1968, 1972–73, 1977; Open University, senior tutor, 1971; Pierpont Morgan Library, Franklin Jasper Walls Lecturer, 1981; lecturer at universities in the United States and France; participant in international conferences. Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ, member, 1977–78. British Broadcasting Corp., broadcaster for Third Programme.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright scholarship and English-Speaking Union fellowship, both 1959–60; Hopwood Award, University of Michigan, 1960, for poems "All These Ithacas," novel "The Sad Probation," and essays "American Collage, and Other Pieces"; fellow of Folger Shakespeare Library, 1966, 1968; senior fellow in Italy, Leverhulme Trust, 1973–74; European exchange grant, British Academy, 1973–74; decorated member, French Order of Arts and Letters, 2000.

WRITINGS:

The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination, 1848–1900, Rout-ledge & Kegan Paul (New York, NY), 1968.

A Critical Commentary on Shakespeare's "The Tempest," Macmillan (New York, NY), 1968.

The Figure in the Landscape: Poetry, Painting, and Gardening during the Eighteenth Century, Johns Hopkins Press (Baltimore, MD), 1976.

Andrew Marvell: His Life and Writings, Elek (London, England), 1978.

The Wider Sea: A Life of John Ruskin, Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden and the English Imagination, 1600–1750, J.M. Dent (London, England), 1985, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1986.

William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer: An Assessment and Catalogue of His Designs, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1987.

Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1992.

(With Yoshio Nakamura and Dirk Frieling) Trois regards sur le paysage français, Champ Vallon (Seyssel, France), 1993.

Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2000.

The Picturesque Garden in Europe, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Victorian Poetry, edited by Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer, Edward Arnold, 1972; John Milton: Introductions, edited by J.B. Broadbent, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1973; Pre-Raphaelites, edited by James Sambrook, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1974; Aspects of Time, edited by C.A. Patrides, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1976; and Shakespeare: Pattern of Excelling Nature, edited by David Bevington and Jay H. Halio, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1978. Contributor of articles, poetry, and reviews to language and literature journals, literary magazines, and newspapers, including Ambit, Journal of Garden History, and Michigan Quarterly Review.

EDITOR

(And author of introduction) Pope's "The Rape of the Lock": A Selection of Critical Essays, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1968.

(And author of introduction) Tennyson's "In Memoriam": A Selection of Critical Essays, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1970.

(And contributor) Encounters: Essays on Literature and the Visual Arts, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1971.

Ronald Paulson, Rowlandson: A New Interpretation, Studio Vista (London, England), 1972.

William Wycherly, The Country Wife, Ernest Benn (London, England), 1973.

(With Peter Willis) The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620–1820, Elek (London, England), 1975.

(And author of introductions) The English Landscape Garden, thirty volumes, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1980.

(With Faith M. Holland) The Ruskin Polygon: Essays on the Imagination of John Ruskin, Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 1982.

The Dutch Garden in the Seventeenth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington, DC), 1990.

The Pastoral Landscape, National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), 1992.

Garden History: Issues, Approaches, Methods, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington, DC), 1992.

(Editor, with Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn) The Vernacular Garden, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington, DC), 1993.

The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

The Italian Garden: Art, Design, and Culture, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Michel Conan) Tradition and Innovation in French Garden Art: Chapters of a New History, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2002.

Editor of "Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture," University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996–. Editor, Studies on the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, beginning 1981; senior editor, Word and Image: Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, beginning 1985.

SIDELIGHTS: John Dixon Hunt once told CA: "Trained in English literature, I have worked increasingly in the history of art and architecture and firmly believe that literary studies need to reach out and relate words to images. I also think that academics need to use their expertise in larger arenas, which is why I have always enjoyed, for example, reviewing books in the London Times or for British Broadcasting Corporation, and why I chose to write a life and works study of Andrew Marvell for non-specialists.

"I love traveling (especially in France, Italy, and Greece; I speak French, Italian, and Greek more or less well—modern Greek painfully) and am fascinated by writers and artists who did travel—Marvell again, Ruskin, Turner, and the English travelers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who visited Italy.

"My life is centered largely around my teaching and I resent even research work that takes me too far from those necessary classroom encounters; what is strangely called 'private work' feeds, for me, at least, directly into what I have to teach. I have always enjoyed teaching in the United States: both the students and courses are different and require different approaches—the changes they force in one stop the mental arteries from hardening.

"What spare time is left over goes into walking, especially in mountains, but not, positively not, into gardening, which I detest but engage in with manic abandon once in a while."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Apollo, October, 1986, review of Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden and the English Imagination, 1600–1750, p. 381; September, 1988, review of William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer: An Assessment and Catalogue of His Designs, p. 212; July, 1993, review of Garden History: Issues, Approaches, Methods, p. 58.

Architects' Journal, August 12, 1992, Dana Arnold, review of Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture, p. 44; February 8, 2001, Richard Weston, review of Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, p. 44.

Architectural Review, November, 1992, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 13; August, 2001, Elsa Leviseur, review of Greater Perfections.

Bloomsbury Review, July, 1992, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 19.

Booklist, July, 1993, Alice Joyce, review of The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, p. 1938; January 1, 2003, Alice Joyce, review of The Picturesque Garden in Europe, p. 825.

Books & Bookmen, October, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 13.

British Book News, September, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 541; September, 1987, review of William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer, p. 615.

Burlington, August, 1988, review of Garden and Grove, p. 634, and review of William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer, p. 638; April, 1989, "The Anglo-Dutch Garden in the Age of William and Mary," p. 307; August, 1994, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 565; June, 2002, review of Greater Perfections, p. 364.

Choice, November, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 536; November, 1992, D. Posner, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 455; January, 2003, S.C. Scott, review of Tradition and Innovation in French Garden Art: Chapters of a New History, p. 851.

Christian Science Monitor, October 7, 1988, review of Garden and Grove, p. B2.

Design Book Review, summer, 1989, review of William Kent, Landscape Designer, p. 58.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, fall, 1989, Morris R. Brownell, review of William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer, p. 83; winter, 1994, Rand Carter, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 267.

English Historical Review, April, 1989, Lindsay Boynton, review of Garden and Grove, p. 503.

History: Journal of the Historical Association, July, 1998, C.P. Brand, review of Garden and Grove and The Italian Garden: Art, Design, and Culture, p. 549.

History Today, September, 1986, David Watkin, review of Garden and Grove, p. 56.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, spring, 1994, Stephanie Ross, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 250; summer, 2001, Allen Carlson, review of Greater Perfections, p. 341.

Library Journal, September 1, 1992, Paula Frosch, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 174.

New York Times Book Review, June 4, 2000, Verlyn Klinkenborg, review of Greater Perfections, p. 14.

Observer (London, England), April 11, 1993, p. 57; July 24, 1994, review of The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, p. 16.

Reference and Research Book News, September, 1993, review of The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, p. 44.

Renaissance and Reformation, winter, 1993, review of Garden and Grove, p. 80.

Renaissance Quarterly, autumn, 1987, review of Garden and Grove, p. 543.

Sixteenth Century Journal, fall, 1997, Corinne Mandel, review of The Italian Garden, p. 879.

Spectator, August 2, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 28; November 29, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 25; December 6, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 36.

Times Literary Supplement, March 12, 1982; November 28, 1986, review of Garden and Grove, p. 1353; March 18, 1988, Andor Gomme, review of William Kent, Landscape Garden Designer, p. 296; July 16, 1993, Alexander Urquhart, review of The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, p. 36.

Victorian Studies, summer, 1993, Donald J. Olsen, review of Gardens and the Picturesque, p. 491.

Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1994, review of The Oxford Book of Garden Verse, p. 30.

Washington Post Book World, August 12, 1982; October 8, 1989, "The Figure in the Landscape," p. 12.