The New Arcadian Journal

“The feisty, visually distinctive and intellectually robust New Arcadian Journal … is refreshingly original” (TLS) as the unique fine press book that combines art and scholarship. The NAJ:-

• Investigates the cultural politics of historical landscapes through engaging with the vestigial presences of architecture, gardens, monuments, sculpture and inscriptions.
• Explores the resonance of garden works by contemporary artists such as Derek Jarman and James Pierce, and especially Ian Hamilton Finlay at Little Sparta and elsewhere.
• Revels in the poetics of place and the breezy terrain of the upland walker.

This website is the most economic place to collect New Arcadian Journals and other publications from the New Arcadian Press:

• The forthcoming NAJ 77/78, Atlantic Flowers, will be published in October 2022. The upland garden of Little Sparta is evocative of distant seas. Atlantic Flowers offers fresh insights into the poetic gardening of Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) by acknowledging that the warship sculptures are simultaneously naval memorials. These comprise about a tenth of the garden’s 280 artworks, which elaborate the poet’s rich treasury of ideas. The consistency of this little known, understated and almost private, elegiac theme is explored from the initial memorial to HMS Illustrious (1972), to the cluster of artworks (1999-2001) that culminate in the monumental Camouflaged Flowers. This epic composition of garden and landscape, planting and sculpture, weather and seasons, commemorates the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945). To reserve a copy, email <patrickjeyres@gmail.com>
• Back Issues ~ each NAJ: £25 UK inc shipping, £30 Airmail; each early NAJ, 1 – 28: £15 UK inc shipping, £20 Airmail. To order by email or phone, see Contact Us.
• PDFs now available (half price and no shipping charge) ~ £10: NAJ 61/62 Ian Hamilton Finlay: Selected Landscapes, Wentworth Castle and Georgian Political Gardening, Lord Raby in Berlin, The Hague and Wentworth Castle and On The Spot: The Yorkshire Landscapes of Hunphry Repton, Landscape Gardener. Earlier editions, £5: NAJ 8 The Brothers, NAJ 10 Gardens of Exile, NAJ 17 Lady Anne’s Way, NAJ 19 Rousham, NAJ 20 Studley Royal and Hackfall.

See Reviews and Bibliography for some of the published appreciations and commentaries.

• For an original perspective, see Karyn Hinkle’s article ‘On Publishing Scholarly Journals as Artists’ Books: Yorkshire’s New Arcadian Journal‘ (2020).

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Still available / Other publications

• The Blackamoor & The Georgian Garden: NAJ 69/70. The 18th-century lead garden statue of a kneeling male African supporting a sundial, The Blackamoor a.k.a. The Kneeling Slave, was created when Britain dominated the Atlantic Slave Trade.
• The Improvement Garden at Stockwood Park, Luton is featured in NAJ 33/34 and NAJ 61/62. This public garden is the largest (and finest) of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s permanent landscape installations in the UK, outside of Little Sparta. In 2020, it was awarded Grade II* status by Historic England and added to the Register of Historic Gardens and Designed Landscapes in England.
• The Ian Hamilton Finlay Collection: Since 1981 the New Arcadian Press has published many works by or relating to Ian Hamilton Finlay. Many are still available ~ 6 NAJs, 11 Broadsheets, 1 small book and 5 cards ~ as a set (£240, excluding post and packing), or individually.
• See the 70 Broadsheets (1981-2011) as well as the Books, Cards, Posters and Ephemera.

In Memoriam

Grahame Jones, 1952-2020, Ian Gardner, 1944-2019, Chris Broughton, 1949-2015. 

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