George Bentham was an English botanist, described by the weed botanist Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". Born into a distinguished family, he initially studied law, but had a fascination with botany from an early age, which he soon pursued, becoming president of the Linnaean Society in 1861, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1862. He was the author of a number of important botanical works, particularly flora. He is best known for his taxonomic classification of plants in collaboration with Joseph Dalton Hooker, his Genera Plantarum (1862–1883). He died in London in 1884.
William Henry Fitton was an Irish physician and amateur geologist.
Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, was a British lexicographer and the author of A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and The Reader's Handbook, among other reference books.
The Unsex'd Females, a Poem (1798), by Richard Polwhele, is a polemical intervention into the public debates over the role of women at the end of the 18th century. The poem is primarily concerned with what Polwhele characterizes as the encroachment of radical French political and philosophical ideas into British society, particularly those associated with the Enlightenment. These subjects come together, for Polwhele, in the revolutionary figure of Mary Wollstonecraft.
The Botanic Garden (1791) is a set of two poems, The Economy of Vegetation and The Loves of the Plants, by the British poet and naturalist Erasmus Darwin. The Economy of Vegetation celebrates technological innovation and scientific discovery and offers theories concerning contemporary scientific questions, such as the history of the cosmos. The more popular Loves of the Plants promotes, revises and illustrates Linnaeus's classification scheme for plants.
Brooksby is a deserted village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Hoby with Rotherby, in the Melton district, in Leicestershire, England. It was the ancestral home of the Villiers family. Brooksby and surrounding villages were served by Brooksby railway station. In 1931 the parish had a population of 69.
Andrew Bloxam was an English clergyman and naturalist; in his later life he had a particular interest in botany. He was the naturalist on board HMS Blonde during its voyage around South America and the Pacific in 1824–26, where he collected mainly birds. Later as a Church of England minister he lived in Warwickshire and Leicestershire and made significant contributions to the study of the natural history of the area. His special interest was in fungi and the genera Rubus and Rosa. His botanical author abbreviation is "A.Bloxam".
Anna Maria Hussey, née Reed was a British mycologist, writer, and illustrator.
Bernard Vise Lightman, FRSC is a Canadian historian of science, and professor of humanities and science and technology studies at York University, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He specializes in the relationship between Victorian era science and religious unbelief, the role of women in science, and the popularization of science.
T. W. Wood was an English zoological illustrator responsible for the accurate drawings in major nineteenth-century works of natural history including Darwin's The Descent of Man and Wallace's The Malay Archipelago. He studied the courtship display behaviour of pheasants, observing them closely and publishing the first description of the double-banded argus pheasant. He illustrated many books, often of birds but also of moths and mammals.
Eliza Brightwen née Elder was a Scottish naturalist and author. She was self-taught, and many of her observations were made in the grounds of The Grove in Stanmore, the estate outside London which she shared with her husband during his lifetime and where she lived as a widow. She was described in 1912, as "one of the most popular naturalists of her day".
Maria Elizabetha Jacson was an eighteenth-century English writer, as was her sister, Frances Jacson (1754–1842), known for her books on botany at a time when there were significant obstacles to women's authorship. In some sources her name appears as Maria Jackson, Mary Jackson or Mary Elizabeth Jackson. She spent most of her life in Cheshire and Derbyshire, where she lived with her sister following her father's death.
Sarah Fitton was an Irish writer and botanist. Assisted by her sister Elizabeth, Sarah Fitton wrote Conversations on Botany (1817), framed as a series of conversations between a mother and her son on botany and the principles of Linnaean taxonomy. The book focuses on the identification and use of plants in a domestic setting, and influenced the popularity of botany as a field of scientific study for women. Color engravings differ between editions of the book.
Agnes Catlow (1806–1889) was a 19th-century British science writer best known for a popular book on conchology.
Alice Brooke Bodington or Alice Brook was a British Canadian science writer who wrote about biology, evolution and race.
Lady Charlotte Murray was a Scottish botanist and author. She was the eldest child of John Murray, 3rd Duke of Atholl, and Charlotte Murray, Duchess of Atholl. Her paternal grandfather was the Jacobite general Lord George Murray while her maternal grandfather was the Hanoverian James Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl.
Charles Alexander Johns (1811–1874) was a 19th-century British botanist and educator who was the author of a long series of popular books on natural history.
Margaret Mary Plues was a British botanist and writer known primarily for her popularizing botanical books, especially those on the ferns and grasses of Great Britain. She also wrote under the pseudonym Skelton Yorke. She spent the latter part of her life working with Catholic establishments providing relief to the poor.
Rosina Maria Zornlin was a British author who wrote science popularizations and works on religion.
Henrietta "Harriet" Sheppard, née Campbell (1786–1858) was a Canadian naturalist and botanist. She was noted for studying and publishing on birds, shells, and plants of the Quebec region. Working with Anne Mary Perceval and Christian Ramsay she collected plants of the region. Along with Perceval, Ramsay, and Mary Brenton, she was a contributor to William Jackson Hooker’s Flora boreali-Americana (1829–1840).
