The Floral Fortune-Teller

Sarah Carter Edgarton, author of several publications on the subject of flowers, applied her expertise to the 19th-century popularity of fortune-telling books by pairing flowers with quotations from popular verse to create this charming fortune-telling game.

"The Floral Fortune-Teller" uses the colors of flowers to define the themes of the reader's future life, and supplies answers in the form of quotations from writers such as Shakespeare, Goethe, Wordsworth and Spenser.

Sarah Carter Edgarton Mayo (Massachusetts, 1819-1848) began publishing her works at age 16 and worked as an author and editor for the rest of her brief life. Her other works include:

The Palfreys: A Tale (1838)

Ellen Clifford; or the Genius of Reform (1839)

The Rose of Sharon: A Religious Souvenir (1840)

Spring Flowers (ca. 1840)

The Poetry of Woman (1841)

The Flower Vase: The Language of Flowers (1843)

Poems by Mrs. Julia H. Scott, Together with a Brief Memoir (1843)

Fables of Flora (1844)