Botany, Sexuality and Women’s Writing, 1760-1830: From Modest Shoot to Forward Plant

This title uncovers extraordinary primary texts unique to the eighteenth century, previously ignored by scientists because of their dialogic, poetic or epistolary format and overlooked by literary scholars because of their scientific content. It introduces newly discovered writers (Cordelia Skeeles, Frances Arabella Rowden, Lady Charlotte Murray and Maria Jacson) to the field of eighteenth-century studies, and situates their work within the growing canon of eighteenth-century women’s writing. It contains full texts of rare botanical poems by eighteenth-century women. It engages with popular and provoking debates on sexuality, as women’s study of the modern sexual system of botany was perceived to threaten female modesty. It charts the appearance of a new literary stereotype, the sexually precocious female botanist!