Botanical Lectures

This reissue contains two works by the botanist Maria Elizabetha Jacson (1755–1829), a Cheshire clergyman's daughter. Her interest in science, and especially botany, may have been encouraged by a family connection with Erasmus Darwin, but it was not until she was in her forties that domestic circumstances drove her to professional writing. In 1797 she published Botanical Dialogues, between Hortensia and her Four Children, an introduction to the Linnaean system for use in schools. This technically rather demanding work was recast for adults in 1804 as Botanical Lectures: 'a complete elementary system, which may enable the student of whatever age to surmount those difficulties, which hitherto have too frequently impeded the perfect acquirement of this interesting science'. The more practical Florist's Manual (1816) was aimed at female gardeners, offering advice on garden design and the war against pests as well as notes on plants and cultivation.