Tulip Fever
Registered by Toni-Louisa of Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom on 4/14/2023
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Seventeenth-century Amsterdam is in the grip of tulip fever.
Sophia's husband Cornelis has grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his beautiful young bride but as the portrait grows, so does the relationship between Sophia and Jan.
Based on stories of tulip mania, I enjoyed this book and would have loved a historical note from the author to accompany it, because it is a piece of history, until I read this book, I knew nothing about. However an article in Smithsonian Magazine (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/) advises there never was real tulip fever. Popular legend it states, tells how the tulip craze took hold of all levels of Dutch society in the 1630s, with the rage among the Dutch to possess them, so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected. The legend tells how everyone from the wealthiest merchants to the poorest chimney sweeps were buying bulbs at high prices and selling them for even more. Companies were formed just to deal with the tulip trade, which reached fever pitch in late 1636 but by February 1637, the bottom had fallen out of the market, leaving traders in debt or bankrupted.
The article goes on to state that although it is true merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, paying incredibly high prices for some bulbs and that the market did fall apart causing a small crisis, the economic repercussions were pretty minor.
It is also true that the Dutch learned tulips could be grown from seeds or buds that grew on the mother bulb but of particular interest to tulip traders were 'broken bulbs' — tulips whose petals showed a striped, multicolor pattern rather than a single solid color (see https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/10/03/broken-tulips/.) The growing demand for these rare, 'broken bulb' tulips led naturalists to study ways to reproduce them (later the pattern was discovered to be the result of a mosaic virus that actually makes the bulbs sickly and less likely to reproduce) and the high market price for tulips refered to in stories of tulip mania, were for particularly beautiful broken bulbs.
Regardless of whether tulip fever did really happen or not, it made for a story which kept me turning the pages and inspired me to want to learn more — I enjoyed reading the book and I enjoyed learning about the real events the story was based on.
Sophia's husband Cornelis has grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his beautiful young bride but as the portrait grows, so does the relationship between Sophia and Jan.
Based on stories of tulip mania, I enjoyed this book and would have loved a historical note from the author to accompany it, because it is a piece of history, until I read this book, I knew nothing about. However an article in Smithsonian Magazine (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/) advises there never was real tulip fever. Popular legend it states, tells how the tulip craze took hold of all levels of Dutch society in the 1630s, with the rage among the Dutch to possess them, so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected. The legend tells how everyone from the wealthiest merchants to the poorest chimney sweeps were buying bulbs at high prices and selling them for even more. Companies were formed just to deal with the tulip trade, which reached fever pitch in late 1636 but by February 1637, the bottom had fallen out of the market, leaving traders in debt or bankrupted.
The article goes on to state that although it is true merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, paying incredibly high prices for some bulbs and that the market did fall apart causing a small crisis, the economic repercussions were pretty minor.
It is also true that the Dutch learned tulips could be grown from seeds or buds that grew on the mother bulb but of particular interest to tulip traders were 'broken bulbs' — tulips whose petals showed a striped, multicolor pattern rather than a single solid color (see https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/10/03/broken-tulips/.) The growing demand for these rare, 'broken bulb' tulips led naturalists to study ways to reproduce them (later the pattern was discovered to be the result of a mosaic virus that actually makes the bulbs sickly and less likely to reproduce) and the high market price for tulips refered to in stories of tulip mania, were for particularly beautiful broken bulbs.
Regardless of whether tulip fever did really happen or not, it made for a story which kept me turning the pages and inspired me to want to learn more — I enjoyed reading the book and I enjoyed learning about the real events the story was based on.
Journal Entry 2 by Toni-Louisa at HYGGE on the Rows in Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom on Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Released 10 mos ago (6/20/2023 UTC) at HYGGE on the Rows in Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Donated to HYGGE On The Rows in Chester for the book friendly space in their café on Northgate Row.
