A Vision of Eden by Marianne North

A Vision of Eden

The Life and Work of Marianne North

Preface by Professor J. P. M. Brenan, Foreword by Anthony Huxley, Biographical Note by Brenda E. Moon

Webb & Bower and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 1980, colour frontispiece, full page colour plates  and colour photographs throughout, gold embossed hardcover, pictorial end-papers, dustjacket, ISBN 0906671183

Near Fine Condition, book almost new, with minor rubbing to edges, owners sticker label to inside front cover, minor edge-wear to dustjacket

'Marianne North, an unmarried middle-aged Victorian lady of comfortable means, set off in 1871 on her first expedition to make a pictorial record of the tropical and exotic plants of the world.  The story of her travels to every continent in the world, often alone and enduring hardships and dangers in conditions so primitive as to be outside the experience of the modern generation, is told in this abridged version of her travel memoirs and autobiography, first published in 1893 under the title Recollections of a Happy Life.  The results of her wanderings were her astonishing collection of over 800 paintings, now housed in the Marianne North Gallery at Kew, and this is the first time that they have been reproduced in book form.  She had a remarkable eye for detail, both in her writing and her painting, and she emerges through her work as strong willed, sometimes prejudiced, but always humorous and kind-hearted; an extraordinary example of the Victorian pioneering spirit. 

In his introduction Anthony Huxley discusses her work from a modern botanical viewpoint, and Professor Brenan, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, explains how the expansion of the Gardens towards the end of the last century.'