A reading list for Paper Garden devotees by Molly Peacock
For readers enchanted by Molly Peacock's account of Mrs. Delany finding her artistic calling at seventy-two, the journey into eighteenth-century gardens, paper mosaics, and the quiet revolution of a woman making art in her later years opens a door to a whole shelf of books. The Paper Garden sits at the intersection of biography, botanical history, and the slow craft of looking, and readers often ask what might feed that appetite next. Whether you found the story in a Melbourne bookshop, borrowed it from a regional library, or received it as a birthday gift from a friend in Sydney, there are companions worth seeking out.
Molly Peacock herself has spoken of the writers who informed her work and shaped her appreciation of the quiet, attentive art Mrs. Delany perfected. The reading list that follows draws from those influences and from books that share The Paper Garden's concerns: women who remake themselves, the natural world rendered in obsessive detail, and the kind of patience that turns a garden, a scrap of paper, or a life into something worth preserving.
Mrs. Delany's world and her circle
The natural starting place is with Mrs. Delany herself, whose life spanned from 1700 to 1788 and whose paper flower mosaics, now housed in the British Museum, continue to startle those who encounter them. The way Delany's literary evenings captured salon culture, blending literary gathering with creative conversation in a way that feels surprisingly modern, helps readers picture the rooms she moved through.
For those wanting to sit alongside the Bluestocking circle, biographies of Elizabeth Montagu and the wider circle of intellectual women trace the friendships Mrs. Delany inhabited. The tradition of women gathering to read, write, and argue about ideas, which we now celebrate in Sydney's writers' festivals and in Melbourne's lit-crawl evenings, had eighteenth-century antecedents in parlours where a woman like Mrs. Delany could flourish.
Late bloomers and second chapters
Mrs. Delany began her paper garden at seventy-two, and her story belongs to a wider literature of people who found their true calling later in life. "The Invention of Everything Else" by Samantha Hunt, about the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, shares that quality of late, almost accidental recognition. "Gaudy Nights" by Dorothy L. Sayers, though earlier in setting, carries the same message about a woman returning to a vocation she had set aside.
The role of grief in her awakening is examined in detail on the official Paper Garden website, where the emotional landscape that shaped Mrs. Delany's late artistic flourishing is given its full attention. Australian readers will recognise the second-chapter spirit in novels like "Eucalyptus" by Murray Bail, where a father sets his daughter's suitors an impossible storytelling task, or in the late-career renaissance of writers who find their voice after decades of other work. There is something distinctly Australian in valuing the long apprenticeship and the late flowering, from a slow-aged Shiraz to a painter who picks up the brush after raising children.
Botanical art and looking closely
Mrs. Delany's paper flowers came from looking at actual blooms with a botanist's attention. Elizabeth Gilbert's "The Signature of All Things" follows a similar obsession with the plant world across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tracing a woman whose life is shaped by mosses, ferns, and the Linnaean project of naming. It pairs naturally with The Paper Garden, and many Australian readers come to it through the botanical gardens in Sydney or Melbourne.
For those drawn to the painterly tradition, "The Art of Botanical Illustration" documents the lineage from Ehret and Redouté to contemporary artists who still work from life. Reading it on a verandah in summer, with a cup of tea and the kind of slow afternoon that Australians do particularly well, feels like the natural companion to Peacock's book.
The patience of paper and handcraft
Mrs. Delany's medium was paper, scissors, and paste, and her painstaking work invites readers into a slower craft world. "The Art of the Fold" by Hedi Kyle and Ulla Warchol is a book for makers, tracing the history of origami and paper folding in a way that gives texture to what Mrs. Delany was doing with her scissors. For Australian readers, the practice of handcraft has its own lineage, from the colonial tradition of needlework to contemporary artists who work in paper and fibre at studios in Collingwood and Fremantle.
The connection between making and meaning, between hours at a table with simple materials and the creation of something that outlasts the maker, is one The Paper Garden celebrates in every chapter. Books on collage, scrapbooking, and the history of paper itself, such as "Paper: Paging Through History" by Mark Kurlansky, deepen the encounter with Mrs. Delany's chosen materials.
| Theme | Companion book | Why it pairs with The Paper Garden |
|---|---|---|
| Biography of creative women | Biographies of Elizabeth Montagu and her circle | Direct engagement with Mrs. Delany's life and friendships |
| Late-blooming lives | The Invention of Everything Else; Gaudy Nights | Stories of people finding vocation after setbacks |
| Botanical obsession | The Signature of All Things; botanical art histories | Plant-based worlds rendered in obsessive detail |
| Paper and craft | The Art of the Fold; Paper: Paging Through History | Mrs. Delany's chosen medium explored further |
| Georgian and early modern fiction | The Miniaturist; Remarkable Creatures | Historical fiction with women at its centre |
| Australian nature writing | Tim Winton's essays; Alexis Wright's novels | Local landscape writing that matches the contemplative tone |
Women of the Georgian era
Mrs. Delany's life touched the Hanoverian courts, the Bluestockings, and the world of Hogarth and Handel. Novels that bring that era alive include "The Miniaturist" by Jessie Burton, set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam but deeply resonant with the world of women confined yet imaginative, and "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, about the fossil hunter Mary Anning, whose late recognition echoes Mrs. Delany's.
Georgian England also appears in "The Blue Flower" by Penelope Fitzgerald, which imagines the life of the German Romantic poet Novalis. For Australian readers accustomed to novels that braid private life with public history, from Geraldine Brooks's "March" to Kate Grenville's colonial works, these stories of women and men making art against historical odds provide a satisfying continuation of the themes The Paper Garden raises.
Nature writing from Australian soil
Finally, the natural world that Mrs. Delany studied so attentively finds its echo in Australian nature writing. Tim Winton's essays on landscape and environment, gathered in books like "Island Home," sit comfortably alongside The Paper Garden because they share Mrs. Delany's patient, observant attention to the living world. Alexis Wright's "The Swan Book," though a very different kind of book, reflects on place and belonging with a similar meditative intensity.
For readers in Adelaide, Brisbane, or Hobart, the local botanic gardens become extensions of the same contemplative space Mrs. Delany cultivated at Bulstrode. There is something fitting in taking The Paper Garden to a reading nook beside a bed of grevilleas or waratahs, letting the Australian landscape and Mrs. Delany's English garden speak to each other across two centuries.
The Paper Garden continues to find readers in Australia through bookshops in Carlton and Paddington, through library copies passed between friends, and through the kind of quiet recommendation that travels by word of mouth. Readers write to share how the book arrived in their hands at the right moment, whether as a gift during a difficult season or as a discovery in a second-hand shop. Some find it while browsing a stall at the Melbourne Writers Festival, others receive it from a mother or aunt. If you are considering The Paper Garden as a present for an artist or gardener in your life, there is a thoughtful reflection on why it works so well as a gift book for art lovers.
Molly Peacock's reading list continues to grow as readers send in their own discoveries. If a book on your bedside table has the quality of attention and the patience that Mrs. Delany brought to her paper flowers, it belongs on this shelf. Share your suggestions, pick up a recommendation, and settle in for the kind of reading that, like Mrs. Delany's garden, only deepens the longer you sit with it.