the late 17th century, and was spreading to the middle classes. The 18th century saw a great increase in books by English authors, by no means all just covering the new English landscape garden style. In the 1710s the highly influential essayist Joseph Addison, often touched on gardening, though his practical experience was virtually nil. He favoured a looser style, though still fairly formal. Stephen Switzer (1682–1745) was an English gardener, whose first and most general title was Ichnographica Rustica, or The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's recreation (1715-18). He is most notable for his views of the transition between the large garden, still very formal in his writings, and the surrounding countryside, especially woodland. The book came rather too early for the flood of new American trees and shrubs that led to the development of the shrubbery a generation later, and subsequently the woodland garden, and Switzer's schemes for the more distant parts of sites from the house seem to have firmly remained woodland rather than garden. Like many later gardening writers, his views are often expressed with more intemperate fervour than clarity, as when he poured scorn on "several Northern Lads which...by the help of a little Learning, and a great deal of Impudence... invade the Southern provinces and ...pretend to know more in one Twelve-month, than a laborious, honest Southern Countryman does in Seven Years....". Batty Langley (1696–1751) another professional gardener and garden designer, published three gardening books in 1728-29, with his many later works covering building and architecture. He reflected the desire for increased freedom in planting and (lack of) trimming trees and hedges, but somewhat cautiously. His books were at least as popular as those of Switzer, but much the most popular book of the century was The Gardeners Dictionary by Philip Miller, first published in 1729 and regularly appearing in new revised and expanded editions until 1768, with another version "based on" it in the 1830s. Miller was chief gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden, a famous foundation in London, for almost 50 years, and was a plantsman rather than a designer, who played an important part in the influx of new foreign plants to English gardening. The English landscape style was not fully described until George Mason's Essay on Design in Gardening in 1768, soon followed by the far more influential, Observations on Modern Gardening, illustrated by descriptions in 1770, by the lawyer and