first edition
1845 · London
by Loudon, Mrs. [Jane]
London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845. First edition. Very Good +. Publisher’s blindstamped green cloth binding titled in gilt. Some dampstaining to cloth and sunning to spine. Remnant and Edmonds bindery ticket to lower pastedown. Foxing to first plate. Otherwise, a very clean, fresh copy. Yellow endpapers. Two friends’ contemporary ink ownership signatures (“Catherine S. Hawkins / Bignor Park” and “Mary Anne Johnstone / from C.S.H.”) to front endpapers and later pencil ownership signature of bookseller George Heywood Hill (1906 – 1986), grandson of Mary Johnstone of Bignor Park, to front flyleaf. Octavo. xi, 396, 32 [publisher’s catalogue] pp. Frontispiece and two full-page illustrations, plus text figures. Very Good + A scarce example of Jane Loudon's practical advice to women who find themselves living in the countryside, OCLC records only six copies in the United States.
Jane Loudon, nèe Webb (1807 - 1858), horticulturalist and early science fiction writer, compiled "the present work, which is the only one I have ever written with any reference to farming...principally for the use of ladies who have been brought up in a town but who from circumstances have been induced to reside in the country...Having lived in the country myself, I know both the inconveniences and enjoyments...in the following pages I have endeavored to save my readers the pain of buying their own experience." Across the book, Loudon does not only address the kinds of loneliness and monotony women might encounter when separated from the kind of feminine company available in town. She also gives practical input on the real work of the countryside so that women do not solely rely on men: advice on building fires for warmth, on laying out functional kitchen gardens and managing fruit trees, on maintaining hens, horses, and stock pond fish, and even on attiring oneself appropriately for cold weather, long rides, and rambling walks. Notably, her words are delivered in an epistolary format as she converses with a woman named Anne — and it is a stylistic choice that further assists her readers in assuaging feelings of isolation and feeling connected to other women in similar circumstances.
Jane Loudon was married to the botanist, writer, and illustrator John Claudius Loudon (1783 - 1843). She wrote over a dozen botanical books, some of which she also illustrated, and assisted her husband in the writing and editing of his own works on botany, including his Encyclopedia of Gardening (1834). Loudon was also a pioneering author of science fiction: she published The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), which is set in the year 2126 and is the first English-language work to feature a reanimated mummy, when she was just twenty-two. The Mummy! was published less than a decade after Frankenstein and a year after The Last Man, and Loudon's work belies the inspiration she took from Mary Shelley's groundbreaking novels. Loudon arguably pushes the bounds of early science fiction further, however, in her invention of an all-new universe of technological and social advancement in which women in the queen's court wear trousers and hair ornaments of gas-powered flame, and "steam-powered automata surgeons and lawyers...speak briefs fed into tubes in their bodies" (Hopkins). It was through The Mummy! that Loudon met her husband, who favorably reviewed the work, eventually leading to her career in botanical writing that is documented here.
Hopkins, Lisa. "Jane C. Loudon’s 'The Mummy!': Mary Shelley Meets George Orwell, and They Go in a Balloon to Egypt" (2003). Very Good +. (Inventory #: 6659)
Jane Loudon, nèe Webb (1807 - 1858), horticulturalist and early science fiction writer, compiled "the present work, which is the only one I have ever written with any reference to farming...principally for the use of ladies who have been brought up in a town but who from circumstances have been induced to reside in the country...Having lived in the country myself, I know both the inconveniences and enjoyments...in the following pages I have endeavored to save my readers the pain of buying their own experience." Across the book, Loudon does not only address the kinds of loneliness and monotony women might encounter when separated from the kind of feminine company available in town. She also gives practical input on the real work of the countryside so that women do not solely rely on men: advice on building fires for warmth, on laying out functional kitchen gardens and managing fruit trees, on maintaining hens, horses, and stock pond fish, and even on attiring oneself appropriately for cold weather, long rides, and rambling walks. Notably, her words are delivered in an epistolary format as she converses with a woman named Anne — and it is a stylistic choice that further assists her readers in assuaging feelings of isolation and feeling connected to other women in similar circumstances.
Jane Loudon was married to the botanist, writer, and illustrator John Claudius Loudon (1783 - 1843). She wrote over a dozen botanical books, some of which she also illustrated, and assisted her husband in the writing and editing of his own works on botany, including his Encyclopedia of Gardening (1834). Loudon was also a pioneering author of science fiction: she published The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), which is set in the year 2126 and is the first English-language work to feature a reanimated mummy, when she was just twenty-two. The Mummy! was published less than a decade after Frankenstein and a year after The Last Man, and Loudon's work belies the inspiration she took from Mary Shelley's groundbreaking novels. Loudon arguably pushes the bounds of early science fiction further, however, in her invention of an all-new universe of technological and social advancement in which women in the queen's court wear trousers and hair ornaments of gas-powered flame, and "steam-powered automata surgeons and lawyers...speak briefs fed into tubes in their bodies" (Hopkins). It was through The Mummy! that Loudon met her husband, who favorably reviewed the work, eventually leading to her career in botanical writing that is documented here.
Hopkins, Lisa. "Jane C. Loudon’s 'The Mummy!': Mary Shelley Meets George Orwell, and They Go in a Balloon to Egypt" (2003). Very Good +. (Inventory #: 6659)
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