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William Sawrey Gilpin (1761/2-1843), landscape painter and illustrator, later became a landscape gardener and writer. He set himself up as a drawing master in Paddington Green and also illustrated picturesque travel-writing. Between 1804 and 1806 he was the first president of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, and then the third drawing master at the Royal Military College in Marlow. After being discharged from this post, Gilpin became a successful landscape gardener and advisor to the nobility. His approach to landscape gardening was influenced by painting and Sir Uvedale Price's Essay on the Picturesque (1794). Gilpin's Hints, published in 1832, advocates that landscapes should be improved by the 'taste' of a painter's eye, and artificial buildings united with their surroundings. Like his landscape practice, this book was highly regarded by Gilpin's contemporaries for its emphasis on the picturesque, especially when landscape gardening centred upon the introduction of exotic plants.

Well known among his contemporaries for his unrivalled knowledge of aberrant plants, Daniel Oliver (1830-1916) ran the herbarium at Kew Gardens and held the chair of botany at University College London, for which he was recommended by Charles Darwin. Although Oliver never visited India, his expertise in Indian botany grew considerably after he worked with an enormous number of dried specimens rescued from the cellars of the East India Company. In this book, first published in 1869, he sets out the basics of botanical study in India for the absolute beginner. It includes instruction on the anatomy of simple plants, lessons in collection and dissection, and explanations of botany's often dense terminology. Annotated diagrams appear throughout, in both microscopic and macroscopic views. Rigorous and carefully structured, Oliver's book remains an excellent resource for novice botanists and students in the history of science.

Samuel Orchart Beeton (1831-77), the publishing entrepreneur who made his wife's Book of Household Management one of the bestselling titles of the century, gave his name to many other books of domestic, medical and general information for the middle classes. (The 1871 Book of Garden Management, published and probably compiled by him, is also reissued in this series.) This work was published in 1874 by Ward Lock, to whom Beeton was forced to sell his own business after a financial collapse in 1866. The book contains 'such full and practical information as will enable the amateur to manage his own garden'. It covers flower, fruit and vegetable gardening, with a section on garden pests and a monthly calendar of tasks. It also contains advertisements for gardening and medicinal products, as well as for other books from the publishers, offering a fascinating insight into social as well as garden history.

Scottish gardener and botanist Thomas Blaikie (1751-1838) spent the majority of his life in France, where he designed and planted some of the most famous Parisian gardens: he drew up the original plans for the gardens of the Chateau de Bagatelle and renovated the Parc Monceau. He became a favourite of Marie Antoinette, and served patrons among the highest ranks of the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary France, including the Comte d'Artois and the Duc d'Orleans. After surviving the French Revolution, he received a commission to create gardens for Empress Josephine at her Malmaison country retreat. Blaikie kept this fascinating diary from 1775 until August 1792. More than just an account of his vast gardening knowledge and achievements, the book gives a unique insight into the social history of the revolutionary period in France. It was edited by the critic and journalist Francis Birrell (1889-1935) and first published in 1931.

Collated by his widow and published in 1897, this collection of memorials, journal extracts and letters of Charles Cardale Babington (1808-95) demonstrates the esteem in which he was held by so many. An influential professor of botany at Cambridge, Babington left to the university a legacy that included the huge herbarium that he had partly funded himself, as well as some 1,600 volumes from his own library. His benevolence and generosity of knowledge, time and money endeared him to many departments and societies, while his works on local flora inspired others to produce many of the county floras that are still used today. His Manual of British Botany (also reissued in this series) first appeared in 1843 and made a huge impact on the study of the subject. These collected writings and tributes will offer students and scholars valuable insight into the breadth of his scientific interests and achievements.

The Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), a physician and pupil of Linnaeus, carried out his most important work in South Africa and Japan. Having studied in Amsterdam and Leiden, he was asked to go plant-hunting in areas where the Dutch East India Company's trading activities were opening up territory for scientific exploration. In 1771 he travelled to South Africa as a ship's doctor, spending three years searching for, classifying and propagating plants, while at the same time becoming fluent in Dutch, as only the Dutch were allowed to enter Japan, his ultimate destination. Having acquired many Japanese specimens, he continued his travels and returned to Sweden in 1779. Three fascicles of this influential reference work in Latin on the South African flora were issued between 1807 and 1813. Reissued here is the full version edited by the Austrian botanist Josef August Schultes (1773-1831) and published in 1823.

Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) was a British botanist and one of the most influential scientific patrons of the eighteenth century. After inheriting a fortune on the death of his father in 1761, Banks devoted his life to studying natural history. His fame following his participation in Captain Cook's epic voyage on the Endeavour between 1768 and 1771 led to his election as President of the Royal Society in 1778, a post which he then held until his death. This volume, first published in 1896, contains Banks' account of the voyage of the Endeavour across the Pacific Ocean. Edited by the great botanist Sir Joseph Hooker, it describes in fascinating detail the peoples, cultures and wildlife Banks encountered in Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. Banks' aptitude as a natural historian and the crucial role he played in cataloguing and illustrating exotic wildlife during the expedition are emphasised in the work.

C. E. Raven (1885-1964) was an academic theologian elected Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1932, who developed an interest in natural history and the history of scientific thought. First published in 1947, this volume demonstrates how changing attitudes to the natural world reflected and influenced the transformations in scientific thought between the medieval period and the eighteenth century. Raven's focus on the field of 'natural history' reveals how the scientific ideas behind modern biological studies developed from the richly illustrated and often fantastical bestiaries of the medieval world. The subjects of this volume are grouped chronologically into Pioneers, Explorers and Popularisers, with biographical details woven together with discussions of their academic work. The book provided a wealth of new information concerning the founders of natural history and remains a valuable contribution to this subject.

Sir Ferdinand von Muller (1825-1896) was a botanist renowned for his research on the native plants of Australia. After emigrating from Germany in 1847, he was appointed Government Botanist of Victoria in 1853 and subsequently Director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Melbourne, which post he held until 1873. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861 and was knighted in 1879 for his services to Australian botany. This volume, first published in 1885, contains Muller's botanical survey of the plants found in the Australian state of New South Wales. Including an introduction by prominent Australian botanist William Woolls (1814-1893), the survey divides the flora into scientific orders, with short descriptions of genera and species. Both native and introduced plants are included in the survey. This volume offers valuable insights into the composition of Australian flora at the time of publication.

Agnes Arber (1879-1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology and the history of botany. In 1946 she became the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. First published in 1912 and issued in an expanded second edition in 1938, this volume traces the history and development of printed herbals between 1470 and 1670. This two-hundred-year period was the most prolific for the publication of herbals, and significantly saw the emergence of botany as a scientific discipline within the study of natural history. Although Arber mentions the medical aspects of the herbal, her analysis remains focused on investigating herbals from a botanical view, with chapters devoted to the evolution of plant descriptions, classifications and illustrations. Her book remains the standard work on this subject. The text of this volume is taken from a 1953 reissue of the 1938 second edition.

Henry Pearson (1870-1916) was an English botanist specialising in research on the Gnetophyta division of woody plants. In 1903 he was elected to the Henry Bolus Professorship of Botany at the South African College, Cape Town (now known as the University of Cape Town), and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1916 shortly before his death. In 1915 Pearson was commissioned to write this volume for the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series. Published posthumously in 1929, it was the first extensive study on the Gnetales order and the only such study in English published during the twentieth century. In it, Pearson investigates the morphology and reproduction of the three Gnetophyta genera and examines their relation to the angiosperms (flowering plants). His research on Gnetophyta was later used together with genetic studies to provide theories explaining the evolution of seed plants.

Agnes Arber (1879-1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology, who focused her research on the monocotyledon group of flowering plants. She was the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1946. This volume, first published as part of the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series in 1925, provides an anatomical and comparative study of the monocotyledon group of plants with an analysis of the methods and objects of studying plant morphology. At the time of publication, comparative anatomy and morphology were the centre of botanical investigation; however there were differences between British and continental biologists concerning the aims of morphological study. In the introduction to this volume Arber reconciled these views by describing a distinction between pure and applied morphology, interpreting the differences in monocotyledonous species in light of this. The book contains an extensive bibliography and 160 figures.

Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan (1879-1967) was a prominent British mycologist, specialising in the sexual process of fungi. In 1909 she was appointed Head of the Department of Botany at Birkbeck College, becoming Professor of Botany when Birkbeck College joined the University of London in 1920. This volume was first published in 1922 as part of the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series. The introduction provides a detailed description of the structure, sexual reproduction, parasitism and symbiosis of all fungi, with subsequent chapters describing fully the morphology and reproduction of genera within the phylum ascomycetes and the orders ustilaginales and uredinales on which Gwynne-Vaughan based her research. Illustrations and a bibliography accompany each chapter. This volume provides an insight into the study of mycology in the early twentieth century, before technological advances in the field of cytology revolutionized the discipline.

George Stephen West (1876-1919) was a prominent British botanist specialising in freshwater algae. In 1906 he became a lecturer in botany at the University of Birmingham and was later appointed the Mason Professor of Botany. This volume was first published in 1916 as the first of the Cambridge Botanical Handbooks series and provides a description of both marine and freshwater algae in the Myxophyceae, Peridinieae, Bacillarieae and Chlorophyceae classes. West describes the habitat, biological conditions, distribution, internal and external structures and life history of these algae in great detail, with a bibliography concluding each chapter. The book provided the first detailed description of the Myxophyceae (or blue-green) class of algae, and provides an insight into knowledge and classification of algae at the time of publication. A second volume containing a full taxonomic account of freshwater algae was planned, but not published owing to the author's death in 1919.

On 27 August 1883, the island of Krakatau was destroyed in one of the most violent volcanic events ever recorded. This caused the 'year without a summer', thousands of deaths (mainly from tsunamis), fabulous sunsets and a measurable cooling of the oceans over nearly a century. Krakatau also provided evolutionary biologists with a unique opportunity to investigate the mechanisms of plant dispersal. This had been the subject of laborious research for Charles Darwin, who had speculated upon and, it seems, accurately postulated how an 'unstocked island' might be recolonised. In this 1908 volume, Alfred Ernst analysed the effects of wind, birds and sea currents in the transport not only of seeds but also of trees, branches and even of substantial animals. Krakatau's ecosystem, at a more primitive stage than that Darwin had seen on the Galapagos Islands, demonstrated how simple but continuous natural forces might re-establish a complex ecology.

John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861) was a botanist and geologist. As teacher, mentor and friend to Charles Darwin, it was his introduction that secured for Darwin the post of naturalist on the voyage of the Beagle. While Professor of Botany, Henslow established the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as a resource for teaching and research. Students were encouraged to examine plant specimens carefully, and to record the characteristics of their structures. Henslow would have known how daunting they found the task of becoming proficient with botanical vocabulary, and produced this volume to provide a secure foundation for scientific investigations. This meticulous glossary, originally published as a single volume in 1857 but drawing on contributions he made earlier to issues of The Botanist and Maund's Botanic Garden, is a testament to Henslow's scholarship. It is liberally illustrated with delightful woodcuts that clarify the meaning of selected terms.

Agnes Arber (1879-1960) was a prominent British botanist specialising in plant morphology and comparative anatomy. In 1946, she became the first female botanist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. First published in 1920, this volume provides a detailed anatomical study of aquatic flowering plants, with a discussion of their evolutionary history. Arber describes the general anatomical and reproductive organs, life histories and physiological adaptations of aquatic plants in detail, with interpretations informed from her previous experimental work. The final section of this volume discusses the evolutionary history of aquatic plants in the light of affinities to terrestrial flowering plants. Arber's account of aquatic plants was the first general description of these plants published, and provides a classic example of the comparative anatomy studies which were central to botanical investigation during the early twentieth century. An extensive bibliography and over 170 illustrations are included in this volume.

Henslow's importance as Darwin's mentor is well established. He recommended Darwin for the post of naturalist on the Beagle and also encouraged him to read Lyell's pivotal geology text (also reissued in this series). While professor of botany at Cambridge, Henslow nurtured independent inquiry and acute observation in his students. These attributes are evident in this liberally illustrated 1835 book, which also reveals the influence of Candolle's Theorie Elementaire de la Botanique (1813) and Physiologie Vegetale (1832). Henslow's book, like his meticulous research papers and his innovative lectures, included focussed investigations on the nature and stability of 'species'. Charles Darwin paid such close attention that he became known as 'the man who walks with Henslow', and Henslow's teachings were to echo through Darwin's writings, from his jottings in notebooks on the Beagle onward. This reissue gives modern readers easy access to the work of this inspirational scientist.

In 1911, Francis Kingdon Ward (1885-1958) set off on his first solo expedition and collected hundreds of plant species, many previously unknown. From Burma, he headed into the Hengduan Mountains of north-western Yunnan province, exploring along the Mekong, Yangtze and Salween rivers in the region between eastern Tibet and western Sichuan. In 2003, this area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of the world's most biodiverse temperate zones, its extraordinary topography arises from its position at the collision point of tectonic plates. This fascinating book, first published in 1913, was one of the most popular by a prolific author. It is generously illustrated with Kingdon Ward's own photographs and maps from the trip. The blue poppy of the title is Meconopsis speciosa, which Kingdon Ward described as the 'Cambridge blue poppy'; rather than the famous 'Tibetan blue poppy' (Meconopsis betonicifolia) that he later brought to England.

This biography of John Ray, the seventeenth-century naturalist, was first published in 1942 at the height of the Second World War. It was written by Charles Raven, an eminent theologian who shared Ray's deep respect for intellectual integrity, honest exploration of the natural world, and the value of both theology and scientific endeavour. More than a superb history, this offers an opportunity to reassess the pivotal contributions of a brilliant but often undervalued scientist. Ray's major publications were written in Latin; Raven's linguistic skills - coupled with his passion for natural history - made him ideally suited to interpret Ray's scientific legacy. Raven reviews Ray's academic and scientific careers in the context of the dramatic social upheavals of his time. He evaluates the remarkable long-term and widespread influence of Ray's work on the development of science, alongside the significance of his final book, The Wisdom of God.

Elizabeth Kent's 1823 book on 'portable gardens' combines practical instruction on how to select plants which will thrive in containers and in the polluted air of cities, with quotations on gardening and flowers from ancient as well as modern authors such as Keats and her personal friend Shelley.

The botanist and librarian Robert Brown (1773-1858) is regarded as one of the most significant figures in the advancement of plant science in the nineteenth century. This two-volume collection of his 'miscellaneous botanical works', edited by John J. Bennett, Brown's assistant, was published in 1866-7.

This two-volume milestone work of 1776 by William Withering was the first systematic botanical guide in English to British native plants. It uses and extends the Linnaean system of classification, and the bulk of the work consists of descriptions of the appearance, qualities and uses of hundreds of plants.

The second edition of this two-volume history of garden design by Marie Luise Gothein was translated into English and published in 1928. The highly illustrated work, describing gardening worldwide from antiquity up to the early twentieth century, is still regarded as among the most thorough and important surveys of its kind.

The botanists Harvey and Sonder originally published three volumes of this work between 1860 and 1865. Reprinted in 1894, the catalogue was completed between 1896 and 1933, chiefly under the supervision of William Thiselton-Dyer. Reissued in ten parts, this significant reference work covers over 11,500 plant species in South Africa.

Privately printed in seven volumes between 1906 and 1913, this well-illustrated work covers the varieties, distribution, history and cultivation of tree species in the British Isles. The species covered in Volume 1 (1906) include beech, spruce and yew.

The botanist Richard Spruce (1817-93) spent fifteen years travelling in South America, studying and collecting numerous plant specimens. His narrative of this endeavour was edited as a labour of love by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and published posthumously in two volumes in 1908.

An author of popular works on natural history, Charles Alexander Johns (1811-74) gained recognition for his books on British plants, trees, birds and countryside walks. First published in 1851, his best-known work is this two-volume guide to British flowering plants, especially noteworthy for its meticulously drawn illustrations.

Between 1796 and 1800, librarian and botanist Jonas Dryander (1748-1810) published this five-volume work recording the contents of the huge scientific library belonging to the distinguished naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820). The work has been described as a 'lasting monument of erudition, perseverance and sound judgment'.

The horticulturist William Aiton (1731-93) became Joseph Banks's superintendent at Kew in 1783, consolidating the status of the gardens. In compiling this three-volume botanical catalogue, published in 1789, Aiton was assisted with the identification and scientific description of some 5,600 species by the botanists Daniel Solander and Jonas Dryander.