Humphry Repton - Publications

Publications

Repton published three major books on garden design: Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1795), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816). These drew on material and techniques used in the Red Books.

Several lesser works were also published, including a posthumous collection edited by John Claudius Loudon, despite having severely criticised his approach to gardens.

His published titles were:

• Hundreds of North and South Erpingham, a part of the History of Norfolk, 1781, vol. iii. I
• Variety, a Collection of Essays, 1788.
• The Bee: a Critique on Paintings at Somerset House, 1788.
• The Bee; or a Companion to the Shakespeare Gallery, 1789.
• Letter to Uvedale Price, 1794.
• Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, 1794. This volume contained details, with numerous illustrations, of the different gardens and plantations which he had formed. He defends himself in chap. vii. and in an appendix from the criticisms of Knight and Price, and reprints his Letter to Uvedale Price. Only 250 copies were printed, and the work has fetched more than four times the original price.
• Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening,’ 1803.
• Odd Whims and Miscellanies, 1804, 2 vols. They were dedicated to Windham. Some of the essays in Variety were reprinted in this collection, and in the second volume is a comedy of Odd Whims, which was played at Ipswich.
• An Inquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening, with some Observations on its Theory and Practice, 1806; it also included his letter to Price.
• Designs for the Pavilion at Brighton, 1808. He was assisted in this by his sons, John Adey and George Stanley Repton. The plans were approved by the Prince of Wales, but, through want of funds, were not carried out.
• On the Introduction of Indian Architecture and Gardening, 1808.
• Fragments on Landscape Gardening, with some Remarks on Grecian and Gothic Architecture, 1816. In this work his son, J. A. Repton, gave him assistance.

Repton contributed to the Transactions of the Linnean Society, xi. 27, a paper "On the supposed Effect of Ivy upon Trees."