Loudon, Jane Wells Webb (1807-1858)
The Ladies' Flower Garden of: Ornamental Bulbous Plants [and] Ornamental Perennials. London: William Smith, 1841; [and] William S. Orr, [1849].First edition of Bulbous Plants, second edition of Ornamental Perennials; two large quarto volumes; illustrated with fifty-eight and ninety full-page hand-finished chromolithographic plates of flowers and plates; bound in uniform later half green morocco, front board of one volume detached, both with rubbing and wear, contents good, 11 x 8 1/2 in. (2)Loudon successfully promoted the idea that gardening was an appropriate hobby for young women through the publication of a number of books in the present series. She also wrote a science fiction novel before the genre was known by that name. In 1827, at the age of seventeen, she anonymously published The Mummy!, in three volumes, which she describes as "a strange, wild novel" set in the twenty-second century.