Edited by Takau Shimada (Senshu University, Japan) and Keiichi Matsudaira (Tokyo Denki University, Japan), this is a collection of thirty writings on the English landscape garden from the late seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, a period when the British picturesque movement flourished as a vital part of British cultural and aesthetic life.

Ordered chronologically from the time when the idea of the landscape garden was introduced, the collection offers the primary source materials on such gardens as Stowe, Kew, Blenheim and others. The set includes not only famous books by Hogarth, Walpole, and Mason, but also very rare books and pamphlets by unknown authors.