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Reginald J. Farrer (1880-1920) was a horticulturalist and plant finder who made a lasting contribution to British gardening, the rockery designs for which he is best known having been greatly influenced by those he discovered in Asia. First published in 1909, this study eloquently describes the author's own garden and its surrounding countryside in his home town of Clapham, Yorkshire. Focusing on the early spring, Farrer reveals through figurative prose the awakening of the flowers and shrubs, the character of the garden as winter disappears, and the aesthetics inherent to the natural world. The study shows his passion for horticulture, and his dedication to an aesthetic that led him to influence generations of gardeners. Featuring an extensive index of plant names and illustrated with photographs taken by the author, it is as informative as it is descriptive, and offers a wealth of anecdotal advice that remains of great interest.

The author of pioneering works on the plant families Euphorbiaceae and Malpighiaceae, French botanist Adrien de Jussieu (1797-1853), from a famous family of scientists, became professor of botany at the Paris Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1826. The author of several specialised monographs, he is best known for his Botanique: Cours elementaire d'histoire naturelle (1842), an exhaustive introduction to botany originally intended for use in French schools. This much acclaimed book went through twelve editions between 1842 and 1884, and was translated into many languages. This English translation, completed while he was still an Oxford student by the young British botanist James Hewetson Wilson (1826-50), was first published in 1849. It contains additional descriptions of the different systems and structures that clarify de Jussieu's terminology, as well as an appendix on geology.

The Veitch dynasty, originally from Scotland, owned plant nurseries in Devon and London throughout the nineteenth century. By commissioning several expeditions to search for new and exotic flora for British gardens, they were instrumental in bringing many previously unknown plants into cultivation in Britain. James Herbert Veitch (1868-1907), who became managing director of the firm, spent time in Germany and France studying the techniques of horticulture, and later travelled the world himself collecting plants for the nursery in Chelsea. This work, published in 1906, gives a detailed account of the family business and of the men that the firm sent to South America, Japan, China and India during the period 1840-1906, including distinguished plant finders such as William Lobb, his brother Thomas, who first introduced various types of orchids from India to Britain for cultivation, and Richard Pearce, who brought back tuberous begonias from South America.

English botanist George Bentham (1800-84) is most famous as the author of the popular Handbook of the British Flora (1858), which ran into many editions. A distinguished scientist, Bentham was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1862, and served as President of the Linnean Society of London for thirteen years (1861-74). Originally published in 1826, this catalogue of plants from the Pyrenees region of France is Bentham's second work. Inspired by French botanist de Candolle (1778-1841) as well as by the analytical methods of his uncle, the famous philosopher Jeremy Bentham, this book is a systematic overview of the plants found between Figueras, in the north of Spain, and Bordeaux, Narbonne and Montpellier in France. The book opens with the story of Bentham's 1825 three-month trip through the Pyrenees region, with botanist G. A. Walker Arnott (1799-1868), on which the Catalogue is based.

This treatise on scientific botany brings together the works of two leading European scientists from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841) and the German botanist and physicist Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel (1766-1833). First published in German in 1820, it was almost immediately translated (anonymously) into English and published in Edinburgh by Blackwood in 1821. This collaborative volume includes three chapters from de Candolle's Theorie elementaire de la botanique published in Paris in 1819, while the remaining texts and the preface were written by Sprengel; at the time, it provided significant advances on previous botanical theories such as the work of German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812). A fascinating document on the evolution of botanical science, the book contains a practical section detailing the characteristics of over forty plants, as well as eight illustrations.

Henry Field (1755-1837) was a British apothecary and member of the Society of Apothecaries of London. Besides serving in various administrative capacities for the Society, as well as for the London Annuity Society (founded by his father), he was nominated in 1831 as one of the medical officers for the City of London board of health, charged with taking precautions against an outbreak of cholera in the city. A lecturer and regular contributor to medical journals, Field is also the author of this history of the Chelsea Physic Garden, first published in 1820. The present reissue, published in 1878, was revised and extended by Robert Hunter Semple (1815-91). The garden was originally created by the Society as a professional resource in 1673 and the book covers its development up to 1878, and also includes a ground plan of the garden in that year.

Sir Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the nineteenth century. He succeeded his father, Sir William Jackson Hooker, as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and was a close friend and supporter of Charles Darwin. His journey to the Himalayas and India, during which he collected some 7,000 species, was undertaken between 1847 and 1851 to increase the Kew collections; his account of the expedition (also reissued in this series) was dedicated to Darwin. In 1855 he published Flora Indica with his fellow-traveller Thomas Thomson, who became Superintendent of the East India Company's Botanic Garden at Calcutta. Lack of support from the Company meant that only the first volume of a projected series was published. However, the introductory essay on the geographical relations of India's flora is considered to be one of Hooker's most important statements on biogeographical issues.

English physician William George Maton (1774-1835) was a polymath who had a special interest in botany: a shell and a parrot were among species named in his honour. His writings on natural history included a catalogue of the plant and animal life around Salisbury, Wiltshire, which was published posthumously in 1843 and is reissued as the second part of this composite work. The first part contains a sketch of Maton's life and work by fellow physician and writer John Ayrton Paris (c. 1785-1856), first presented to the Royal College of Physicians, and subsequently published in 1838. Paris discusses Maton's early life, his contributions to the growing field of botany, his other scientific and antiquarian interests, and his distinguished medical career, during which he was appointed physician-extraordinary to Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, and later physician-in-ordinary to the duchess of Kent and the young Princess (later Queen) Victoria.

Professor of botany from 1825 until his death, John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) revived and greatly advanced the study of plants at Cambridge. His influence helped to make the University Botanic Garden an important centre for teaching and research. Originally published over a period of seventeen years, and now reissued here together, these thirteen papers reveal the impressive breadth of Henslow's scientific knowledge. The first two items, from 1821, address the geology of the Isle of Man and Anglesey respectively, preceding his five-year tenure as chair of mineralogy at Cambridge from 1822. The rest of the papers, dating from 1829 to 1838, address botanical topics. Professor John Parker, Director of Cambridge University Botanic Garden, has provided a new introduction that traces Henslow's developing interests and contextualises the items in this collection. Several of Henslow's other publications, including his Catalogue of British Plants (1829), are reissued separately in this series.

John Lindley (1799-1865) was an English botanist and a leading authority on orchids. He attended Norwich Grammar School but was unable to afford university. Lindley's passion for botany helped him into the position of assistant in the herbarium of the naturalist and explorer Sir Joseph Banks. He soon established himself as a botanist of considerable talent, and was elected to the Linnean Society of London at the age of twenty-one. In 1822 he became assistant secretary to the Horticultural Society, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1828. He was Professor of Botany at University College, London, from 1829 to 1860. Published in 1838, Flora Medica is a systematic reference work written to help medical students understand the botanical characteristics and therapeutic properties of important medicinal plants from around the world. The book includes an appendix of indigenous names of Asiatic species, and a full index.

Leonard Jenyns (1800-93; he changed his name late in life to benefit from a legacy), was a clergyman, and a respected naturalist and zoologist. A distinguished member of a dozen scientific societies, he was educated at Eton, and then at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1822. During his tenure as vicar in Swaffham Bulbeck, he made important contributions to zoology, becoming one of the original members of the Zoological Society of London. In 1831, unwilling to spend years away from his parish responsibilities, he turned down the chance to travel as the naturalist on-board H.M.S. Beagle. Published in 1889, this is the second edition of Jenyns' autobiography, which he had first had privately printed. It starts with the major events of his life, then shares a series of scientific anecdotes, including his decision to recommend Darwin instead of himself as the naturalist for the Beagle voyage.

The eminent British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865) expanded and developed the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a world-leading centre of research and conservation. Appointed its first full-time director in 1841, Hooker came to Kew following a highly successful period in the chair of botany at Glasgow University. He quickly began to extend the gardens, arranging for the building of the now famous Palm House and establishing the Museum of Economic Botany. This volume reissues Hooker's popular guides to the gardens (sixteenth edition) and to the museum (third edition), both published in 1858. Illustrated throughout, these documents reveal the areas and specimens accessible to a receptive Victorian public. Hooker's ten volumes of Icones Plantarum (1837-54) have also been reissued in this series, along with many works by his son and equally accomplished successor, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911).

Intended for young men with limited formal education, this manual was the final project of the landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843). Completed by friends, the book appeared posthumously in 1845. The son of a farmer, Loudon was well aware that men who began their careers as gardeners often became the stewards of estates, bailiffs, or tenant farmers later in life, and he provides here some of the mathematical and technical instruction necessary to carry out those roles successfully. Including sections on fractions, geometry, trigonometry, architectural drawing, and the calculation of wages and interest rates, the book traces a remarkable picture for the modern reader of the administrative duties expected of horticultural and agricultural workers in the mid-nineteenth century. Also included are conversion tables, a biography of Loudon, and a short preface by his wife Jane, whose Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (1840) is also reissued in this series.

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.

Jane Haldimand Marcet (1769-1858) wrote across a range of topics, from natural philosophy to political economy. Her educational books were especially intended for female students, to combat the prevalent idea that science and economics were unsuitable for women, but they found broader popularity: Michael Faraday, as a young bookbinder's apprentice, credited Marcet with introducing him to electrochemistry. This two-volume work, first published in 1829, is a beginner's guide to botany. Since the chief aim was accessibility, Marcet does not dwell on the often burdensome process of plant classification, but focuses on plant forms and botany's practical applications. She presents the facts in the form of simple conversations between two students and their teacher. Based on the lectures of the Swiss botanist Candolle, Volume 2 considers agriculture and plant diseases, the cultivation of trees and culinary vegetables, and the effects of humans on flora.

Jane Haldimand Marcet (1769-1858) wrote across a range of topics, from natural philosophy to political economy. Her educational books were especially intended for female students, to combat the prevalent idea that science and economics were unsuitable for women, but they found broader popularity: Michael Faraday, as a young bookbinder's apprentice, credited Marcet with introducing him to electrochemistry. This two-volume work, first published in 1829, is a beginner's guide to botany. Since the chief aim was accessibility, Marcet does not dwell on the often burdensome process of plant classification, but focuses on plant forms and botany's practical applications. She presents the facts in the form of simple conversations between two students and their teacher. Based on the lectures of the Swiss botanist Candolle, Volume 1 introduces roots, leaves, sap, and the effects of different soil and air.

The first career of Robert Sweet (1783-1835) was as a gardener in private employment and as a nurseryman. He turned in 1826 to botanical writing, having already published Hortus suburbanus Londinensis (1818), and the first of the five-volume Geraniaceae (1820-30). The first edition of this work was published in 1826, and this revised second edition in 1830. Sweet uses Jussieu's 'natural' system of classification, but concedes that 'we still consider the addition of the Linnaean classes and orders, of great use, as they are so readily attained by the young Botanist'. He provides nine two-column closely packed pages of source works in which images of the plants cited in this unillustrated work can be found, and which also testify to the breadth of his own research in producing a reference work which is comprehensive as a record of plants then growing and flowering in British gardens.

In Britain, the name of Cadbury has been synonymous with chocolate ever since John Cadbury opened his factory in 1831. This book, written by Richard Cadbury (1835-99) under the pen name 'Historicus', was published in 1892. It describes the natural history of the tropical American cocoa plant, its spread in cultivation across the world, and the history of its use. He also deals with the manufacturing process, as exemplified by the Cadbury factory at Bournville, surrounded by the model housing and leisure facilities which the family built for its workers. The processing of cocoa beans into solid and drinking chocolate is described in detail, with emphasis on the developments in machinery which simplified production. A chapter deals with the importance of the vanilla plant for flavouring, and an appendix gives guidance on the cultivation of cocoa trees. This remains a fascinating account of one of the world's most popular indulgences.