Charles Dudley Warnerwas born in Massachusetts in 1829. After practicing law in Chicago, he moved to Connecticut and became an associate editor and publisher ofThe Hartford Courant. In addition to writing travel essays for theCourantand forHarper’smagazine, as well as several novels, he collaborated with Mark Twain onThe Gilded Age. He died in 1900. Michael Pollanis the author of theNew York TimesbestsellerThe Botany of Desire, andSecond Nature, named one of the best gardening books of the twentieth century by the American Horticultural Society. He is a contributing editor toHarper’smagazine and a contributing writer atThe New York Times Magazine. Pollan chose the books for the… Modern Library Gardening series because, as he writes, “these writers are some of the great talkers in the rich, provocative, and frequently uproarious conversation that, metaphorically at least, has been taking place over the back fence of our gardens at least since the time of Pliny.”