Fern Books in English Published before 1900 (review)

Ferns, having no flowers or fruit, had little appeal for eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century gardeners, and were unclassifiable by the botanical system of Linnæus. This suddenly changed after 1850, when the 'Victorian fern craze' set in. The remains of ferneries and fern-houses, and occasional working examples, still adorn grand gardens of that period, but there was an explosion of interest in other aspects of ferns as well. In each of the next five decades fifty or sixty books or new editions were published, treating ferns from a taxonomic, horticultural, artistic, or occasionally ecological point of view.

This book is the outcome of forty years' work. It lists, describes, and sometimes illustrates some 400 books and booklets of ferns in their various editions and reprints, from learned botanical works (and their sometimes catty reviews, and occasional copyright disputes) to nurserymen's catalogues. Some went through twenty editions and reprints; others are known from only one copy. Although some were taken up by famous publishers, many were issued by obscure country printers; one was printed in an Indian jail.

Ferns, as approximately two-dimensional objects, lent themselves to reproduction on paper by all the methods then available. Drawings, watercolours, and woodblocks tended to be clumsy and amateurish for such complex and minutely detailed objects. An alternative was to dry the actual ferns (or even to import them from abroad, to save depredating rare wild populations) and glue them individually to the page. Photography was used from the 1850s onwards. Then fern publication began to stimulate the growth of printing technology, first through lithography and then through 'nature-printing', a method of converting the fern frond itself — or rather two fronds, since both sides had to be illustrated — into a metal printing-plate.

Along with state-of-the-art printing went magnificent bindings, especially in the embossed, green-gold-and-red cloth style much used even for comparatively cheap books. Some even had wooden covers with lovingly detailed marquetry insertions.

The geographical coverage is curious. Most of the works are related to Great Britain, as continental fern books are outside the scope of this book. Among other English-speaking lands, the foremost is New Zealand, which accounts for 11 per cent of the total number of works, beginning in 1845 in the early years of British settlement. North America has 10 per cent of the publications; next comes India; while South Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean are far behind. Ireland, although its filmy ferns appear in many more general works, has only two fern books of its own.