Contents: Foreword by Tom Pocock; Acknowledgements; Preface; The Abney Estate: an historical introduction; The Cemetery - planning, building and planting; A Guide through Abney Park - landscape and memorials; Graves, Tombs and Monuments - a select list; Nature in Abney Park Cemetery - the woodland in inner London by Dr. Alan Hunt; Sources and Further Reading, Glossary; Index. About this book: 'The most highly ornamented cemetery in the neighbourhood of London' was how the landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon described the recently completed Abney Park in 1843. He particularly admired the novel mixture of ancient trees and new arboretum, which made this first of all true Victorian garden cemeteries such a splendid setting for its ranks of monumental sculpture. But the real story of this place begins another two hundred years before and weaves its own intriguing strand of radical tradition; one moreover which helps to explain much about the cemetery's special character, its close identification with Isaac Watts and other nonconformist celebrities. As popular resorts, some ambitious early London cemeteries generated their individual guide books. Abney Park was no exception: after a century of silence, this is in effect the fourth, the most lavishly illustrated of the sequence and, with extensive fresh research, it brings the history up to date because much in the cemetery has changed since the guide was originally published, for example, the management of it has passed from the London Borough of Hackney to the Abney Park Cemetery Trust. Several important graves have been rediscovered, e.g. William Adolphus Knell (1801-75), the Victorian marine painter; and Emily Goss (1806-1857) the naturalist; and James de Foe (1778-1857) great grandson of Daniel Defoe. Paul Joyce's book has been described as the finest guide to a Victorian cemetery yet published and, into the bargain, contains an excellent history of Stoke Newington,