Mrs. Delany, Her Life and Her Flowers

"The highest-bred woman in the world, and the woman of fashion of all ages." So Edmund Burke spoke of the witty and charming Mrs. Mary Delany, one of the most remarkable personalities of the eighteenth century. Her "paper mosaicks," beautiful flowers made with hundreds of pieces of colored paper, and put together, as Horace Walpole wrote, "with a precision and truth unparalleled," were the crowning achievement of her long and creative life. Indeed, so accurate were they, that the great botanist Sir Joseph Banks said that he could identify the plant species with certainty from her work. Amazingly, she was 72 before she embarked on the 1000 flower collages, but she had already made a name with her exquisite works of embroidery, decorative shellwork, landscape sketches, and portraits.Through a study of Mrs. Delany's correspondence, spanning her eventful life, Ruth Hayden recaptures the atmosphere of privileged society in eighteenth-century England. Mrs. Delany's lively and perceptive letters to her sister Anne and her niece Mary reveal her often strong views on the events of the period and the life of her circle. Mention of luminaries of social, political, and artistic life enliven her correspondence. She was a friend of Handel and a correspondent of Swift. Her friendship with the Duchess of Portland brought her into contact with some of the greatest botanical artists and botanists of the time. She became a much-loved friend of George III and Queen Charlotte, who took great interest in her work.Since the first publication of this book in England in 1980, Ruth Hayden has discovered much further material relating to Mrs. Delany, which is incorporated in this new edition. The author has made a complete list of all the known paper collages with botanical details. New color illustrations of the flowers reveal the astonishing complexity of the artist's work.