How to cite this book chapter: Finch, J. and Woudstra, J. 2020. Lancelot 'Capability' Brown: An Eighteenth-Century Life. In Finch, J. and Woudstra, J. (Eds.), Capability Brown, Royal Gardener: Te business of place-making in Northern Europe, pp. 1–15. York: White Rose University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22599/CapabilityBrown.a. CC BY-NC 4.0 CHAPTER 1 Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown: An Eighteenth-Century Life Jonathan Finch and Jan Woudstra Early Years Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–83), Britain’s most famous gardener and designer, was undeniably a man of his times. His life spanned a period of unprecedented social and economic change, which saw increased invest- ment in the transformation of the English rural landscape: a landscape within which most people lived and earned a living, and a landscape whose ownership determined the political constitution of the country. Yet it was a landscape in fux, with new industrial centres changing how and where people lived and worked, creating new forms of wealth from networks that spanned the globe. Brown’s life work was to realise a landscape style attuned to the needs of the social and economic elite, who had consolidated their hold on the levers of power afer the political settlements of the late-seventeenth century. Brown’s landscapes embodied the aspirations and ideals of those who benefted most from the evolving modern world: landscapes that embodied balance and harmony through the elegance and comfort of beauty. When Brown was born in Northumberland around 1716, the frst stirrings of the modern landscape move- ment were already being articulated. During the frst few years of the eighteenth century most of the literature published on gardens in Britain was either translations or reprints of earlier works. 1 One of the most signif- cant was John James’s Te Teory and Practice of Gardening, published in 1712, as a translation of Dézallier d’Argenville’s work (1709), which celebrated André le Nôtre’s formal garden style, associated with the French court. 2 However, the move away from such formalism began with Stephen Switzer’s Te Nobleman, Gentleman and Gardener’s Recreation, published in 1715, which was the foundation for his great work Ichnographia Rustica (1718). 3 Switzer trained at the Brompton nursery under George London and Henry Wise, as did the designer Charles Bridgeman (d. 1738), whose landscapes popularised the new move towards a greater naturalism, and 1 Blanche, H. (1975). British botanical and horticultural literature before 1800 (Vol. 2, p. 415). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2 James, J. (1712). The theory and practice of gardening. London; Dézallier d’Argenville, A. J. (1709). La theorie et la pratique du jardi- nage. Paris. 3 Switzer, S. (1718). The nobleman, gentleman and gardener’s recreation. London; Switzer, S. (1718). Ichnographia Rustica. London.