Some of the finest mushrooms ever recorded on paper, the plates of Anna Maria Hussey's Mushroom Illustrations render British fungi in exact, full-colour detail.
Anna Maria Hussey is often regarded as Britain's first female mycologist. She painted these plates with her sister Frances Reed, for the work originally titled Illustrations of British Mycology, issued in parts between 1847 and 1855. Through careful fieldwork, the two women drew each one where it grew, among the leaves and insects of its habitat, capturing the exact characteristics of every one – the sheen of a cap, the flush of a bruised stem, the strange forms of the fly agaric and the stinkhorn.
Hussey wrote the accompanying text herself, filling the book with her own sharp, funny wit. Her field notes are precise, added alongside her knowledge of foraging, dissecting, cooking, and often the folklore behind the curious fungus. She worked at a time when few women were credited in the sciences, and, combined with her illustrations, she produced one of the most striking and groundbreaking works on the subject. Hussey's plates remain among the most beautiful ever made of British fungi, and are a tribute to the women who quietly built the foundations of the field.
This edition showcases the landscape of Victorian mycology and the women who helped define it, bringing together facsimile plates from Hussey's original work and a collection of period writings that frame it in the context of nineteenth-century science.
Book Features:
- Facsimile plates reproduced from Anna Maria Hussey's Illustrations of British Mycology (1847–1855), with selected extracts from her original text.
- Detailed studies of native British fungi, co-illustrated with her sister Frances Reed.
- Period writings situating Hussey's work in nineteenth-century mycology.
- The work of Anna Maria Hussey, often regarded as Britain's first female mycologist.
- A distinctive gift and coffee table book for foragers, nature lovers, and admirers of mushroom art.