Florilegia: /

Amateur botanist Anna Atkins is now widely considered to be the first woman ever to have taken a photograph. The introduction to one of her albums states that she uses the photographic medium in order to “depict with the most accuracy possible,” and so assist other scientists.

Yet visual artist Annabel Dover’s investigations led her to believe that Atkins doctored and adulterated certain specimens, collaging different sections of different plants together.

In the subversive, scrapbook narrative that follows both historic and imaginary characters’ stories are woven together: Henry James ‘drowns’ the clothes of a friend post-suicide; Joe Orton’s cleaning lady considers the collaged wall in his bedsit; and Anna Atkins makes the seaweed prints that will then appear in the first photographic book to be published. A complex mixture of scientific observation and tender, girlish enthusiasm Florilegia is above all else a profound meditation on memory, loss, and our relationship to images.

"Haunting, enchanting, and forensically observed... a tender, anthropological elegy, and it will stay with you long after you finish it." - Sophie Dahl

"A staggering accomplishment. Impossible to categorise, this is a work of exquisite art; encyclopaedic in its scope, drawing connections across time and cultures. An alchemist, Annabel Dover transmutes the minutiae of life into poetry." Heidi James

"An archive of nature and artifice in which every word shimmers with kaleidoscopic brilliance." Nancy Campbell

"Annabel Dover's writing is a delight: inquisitive, keen-eyed, alive with colour and texture; she has the rare ability to make details sing. I loved this book." Laura Barton

“You’ll never read another book like this… it defies any description save that it is mad, enchanting and mesmerising…. At its end I had no idea what I had been reading but I know it’s a work of art.” Polly Devlin

“A fascinating, subversive and moving tribute to forgotten women by a unique artist.” Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

“A trippy, hyper-connected, vastly entertaining memoir entangled with the history of art, botany and science. It's hypnotising.” Jennifer Higgie

“A strange, beautiful response to the life and work of botanist, photographer & cyanotype trail-blazer Anna Atkins.”