Jenny Joseph was first published in the 1950s by John Lehmann. Her first published collection, The Unlooked-for Season, won her a Cholmondeley Award and her prose and verse narrative, Persephone, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 1995 she was awarded a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship. In 2006 her poem 'Warning' was voted Britain's favourite modern poem. She had three grown-up children and lived in Gloucestershire. Jenny Joseph died in 2018, aged 85.
"A gardening book for the literary-minded. -- Woman’s Hour * Radio 4 * A treat for the sensual gardener. -- Alan Titchmarsh * Daily Express * Led by the Nose looks and feels like the perfect present for a favourite gardening aunt. Small and chunky, beautifully illustrated with darkly floral woodcuts by Yvonne Skargon, it charts the changing seasons in Jenny Joseph's ""rural slum"" * Times Literary Supplement * If you have had enough of gaudy melon flowers, try the poet Jenny Joseph's little paperback, Led by the Nose: A Garden of Smells. It will give you just the right shot of romantic Englishness as you sniff your way through the author's gardening year ... poetic, as you would expect from Joseph, but not soppy -- Stephen Anderton * The Times * Combining the knowledge of a seasoned gardener with the writing power of a poet * Mail on Sunday * You may not think that you know the work of Jenny Joseph, but you do. She is the author of 'Warning: When I am an old woman I shall wear purple' - once voted the nation's favourite poem and a worldwide bestseller. Now she has written this year's most unusual gardening book. * The Times * This little book, covering a year in her own garden, is much more than an account of what borders she dug and when she planted her sweet peas ... the poet's sensitivity comes through in the details ... for those who want to evoke similar Proustian memories * Sunday Times *"