Before he ever dreamed of becoming a landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) visited southern England and Wales during a month-long walking tour. A gifted writer, he recorded his impressions of the trip in a narrative that is at turns poetic, funny, critical, and meticulous. It is also an important historical document, revealing the extent to which England permeated almost every aspect of Olmsted’s emerging worldview, soon to find expression in his various careers as scientific farmer, author and publisher, social critic, reformer, administrator, and landscape architect. After establishing a partnership with the architect Calvert Vaux, his collaborator on New York’s Central Park, Olmsted led a firm with his son and stepson that executed more than five hundred commissions. Olmsted expanded the parameters of the growing profession with new types of projects ranging from scenic reservations, college campuses, and residential communities to great urban parks and park systems throughout the nation.