Dear list
To coincide with Darwin Day, the Lindley Library is pleased to announce that a collection of 19th-century letters written to George Maw has been catalogued. Maw was a tile manufacturer, plant collector and horticulturist, who corresponded with Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, Gertrude Jekyll, John Ruskin and other prominent individuals. The archive includes 15 letters from Charles Darwin, who invited Maw’s observations on his theories between 1861 and 1880, incorporating some of them into his work. Around 200 letters are from J.D. Hooker, director at the Royal Gardens, Kew, who wrote about the development of the gardens, contemporary practices there, and anxieties and problems around their management. Many letters detail the equipment Hooker and Maw sourced in preparation for their plant collecting expedition to Morocco in 1871, and Maw made numerous other plant collecting trips including to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. He sent gifts of plants to Gertrude Jekyll after they met in 1880, and in 1886 Jekyll wrote that she wished that they lived ‘within neighbourly distance’. Maw wrote on horticultural matters, especially the genus Crocus, and was himself an accomplished artist: in a letter to Maw, John Ruskin wrote of his crocus drawings that they were ‘most exquisite […] and quite beyond criticism’.
The archive is located at the Lindley Library, Vincent Square, London. To see the on-line catalogue please visit the Archives Hub: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb803-maw (avoid Internet Explorer, and copy and paste the url into your browser if the link doesn't work). If you would like to view the archive, please make an appointment at the Library by emailing [log in to unmask]
Best wishes
Liz
-----------
Liz Taylor
Archivist
RHS Garden Wisley
Woking
Surrey GU23 6QB
Direct line: 01483 479 782
Email: [log in to unmask]
Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]
For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra
|