Botany was a popular subject for women in the nineteenth century. The materials were readily accessible for home study, and it was thought to be a good way of encouraging women to go outside and get some exercise and fresh air. It was, furthermore, an important subject; medical students studied botany as an essential part of their syllabus (materia medica, the raw material of medicines), and the increasing importance of empire, together with new experimental approaches such as Darwin's, rendered it cutting-edge. Of more than six hundred letters exchanged by Darwin and female correspondents, the largest number, after letters about family matters, are about botany. These range all the way from observations carried out on his behalf by nieces, to exchanges with other specialist botanists. This chapter only has room for a fraction of the letters available, and concentrates on four correspondents: Dorothy Nevill, Lydia Becker, Mary Treat, and Sophie Bledsoe Herrick.
...MoreBook Samantha Evans (2017) Darwin and Women: A Selection of Letters.
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