The Flower Vase

For thousands of years, gifting flowers has remained one of the most universally recognized gestures of affection, celebration, and sympathy. Flowers can convey emotions when words may not suffice: bouquets of roses on Valentine's Day, poinsettias for Christmas, or a spray of wildflowers to brighten a room. The tradition of gifting flowers is less concerned with the flower itself, but instead the symbolism it carries-the message construed through each bud and petal. The Victorian language of flowers, also known as floriography, a complex system for communicating emotion through the careful crafting of bouquets and floral arrangements.

This new edition of Sarah C. Edgarton Mayo's The Flower Vase includes the complete 1844 edition of the text as well as a historical overview of floriography and a biography of the author. The book contains 146 poems, each for a different type of flower. Along with Mayo, the book contains poems by John Greenleaf Whittier, William Henry Burleigh, Miss C. A. Fillebrown, Miss J. A. Fletcher, James Aldrich, Maria Jane Jewsbury, Phoebe Carey, George Payne Rainsford James, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Amelia B. Coppuck Welby, Lucy Hooper, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, James Gates Percival, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Hannah Jane Woodman Lewis, Mary Ann Dodd, Lucy Hooper, John Kenyon, and others.