Books
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Deborah Moggach. “Tulip Fever”
What happens when a rich elderly merchant commissions a young artist to paint a portrait of himself and his beautiful young wife. Passions grow as the portrait evolves, leading the artist and the young wife class=”floatLeft”to risk their status, reputations and future. Set at the height of Tulipmania in 1630’s Amsterdam, Deborah Moggach captures the sights, sounds and smells of the city, in a novel full of humour, tragedy, love and power.
Tulip Fever from amazon.com
Simon Schama “The Embarrassment of Riches”
Outstanding narrative and factual history at its best. Schama charts of the rise and fall of the 17th century Dutch Republic. Illustrated by the art of the Golden Age of Dutch culture, he shows the the nation with all its neuroses and religious idiosyncracies. A must read for anyone interested in this period of Dutch history, and tulipomania.
The Embarrassment of Riches from Amazon.com
Text Links go to Amazon.com.
In an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than £6 million in today’s money. Tulipomania had reached its height, and its story is told in just one of the fascinating sections of Anne Pavord’s wonderful book on this most seductive of flowers, The Tulip. Pavord’s passion for the flower is evident from the opening pages of the book, as she scrambles across the hillsides of Crete in search of an obscure, indigenous purple tulip, whose discovery leads into Pavord’s extraordinary history of this beautiful yet enigmatic flower. The Tulipomania which gripped 17th-century Europe was a form of futures trading, as people purchased tulip bulbs at increasingly inflated prices with the hope that they would flower into the most beautiful and kaleidoscopic colours imaginable. The Tulip is an extraordinary book, beautifully illustrated and offering a fascinating story of our obsession with the most ephemeral of objects; buying tulip bulbs will never be the same again! –Jerry Brotton
The Tulip from Amazon.com
