The Sleeping City: The Story Of Rookwood Necropolis by David A. Weston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It’s not easy to find books about Australian cemeteries in the US. This one is currently going for over $200 on Amazon, although I paid much less on ebay. I don’t know if this indicates a lack of Australian cemetery books in general or if they just aren’t being marketed to the American cemetery aficionado scene.
As cemetery books go, this one is fairly comprehensive, if a little dry. It offers color images of the landscape and grave markers (although it could certainly have more). It has images from historical ephemera. It has page after page of black and white photographs of the cemetery in its prime.
It’s scattered with the kind of historical tidbits I like, like the first burials in each division of the necropolis. The book has whole section on the artistic and architectural styles on display in Rookwood. There are also chapters on the Rookwood Cemetery railroad line, the family of stonemasons who worked in the cemetery for four generations, and the landscape design, with a focus on the original plants that survive.
The Sleeping City could use much more information on the characters buried in Rookwood. There’s barely a mention of Ruby Elizabeth Sterio Adams, who died in 1982, and whose gravestone honors her as Queen of the Gypsies. The chapter profiling people buried here isn’t even 30 pages long. The listings skew Anglo and male.
Since this year is the sesquicentennial of Rookwood Necropolis, I hope a new guide is on its way.
As I mentioned, a paperback copy of The Sleeping City: The Story of Rookwood Necropolis edited by David A. Weston is available on Amazon for a whole lot of money. I got a hard cover copy via ebay for much less.