Hardback in two volumes in slipcase – 244 x 274 mm – 190 pages + 160 pages

One hundred and eighty pages of facsimile pages in colour and 41 additional colour images

ISBN 9781843682332

RUSKIN SOCIETY BOOK OF THE YEAR

A full-size facsimile of John Ruskin’s as yet unpublished book of pressed plants with notes, collected and compiled by Ruskin during 1844 from the mountains and forests around Chamonix, France. This rare example of a herbier to be reproduced and published is accompanied with a second volume of notes and commentary. Here, Ruskin’s full, scientific explanations are fully commented on in the light of modern botanical knowledge.

David Ingram remarks that ‘The Flora not only throws new light on Ruskin’s early botanical studies but also includes data that informs twenty-first-century environment change research.’

Professors David Ingram and Stephen Wildman provide an introduction, illuminating essays and detailed notes and commentary on Ruskin’s herbier.

Professor David S. Ingram OBE, VMH, FRSB, FLS, FRSE is a former Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (now Honorary Fellow) and RHS Professor of Horticulture and Master of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge (now Honorary Fellow), and currently Honorary Professor of the University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Science) and Lancaster University (Environment Centre). He has had a long and distinguished career in academic research and teaching and has published many papers in fields as diverse as plant and horticultural science and botany, the synergy between these fields, and nineteenth to twenty-first century decorative and fine arts (especially work on John Ruskin) and citizen science. He has also used his knowledge to bring his enthusiasm for all things botanical to a wider public. He is the author and co-author of many books including Plant Disease (New Naturalist and Harper Collins), Science and the Garden (Wiley and RHS) and The Gardens at Brantwood (Pallas Athene and the Ruskin Foundation).

Professor Stephen Wildman is the retired Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre at Lancaster University and was its founding curator. A former curator of Prints and Drawings at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, he has written on many aspects of nineteenth-century British art, especially British watercolours, Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites, organising exhibitions in America, Japan and the UK. His book on Ruskin’s drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was published in 2021 and he maintains a catalogue raisonné of Ruskin’s drawings.