William Jackson Hooker

The eminent British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) expanded and developed the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a world-leading centre of research and conservation. Appointed its first full-time director in 1841, Hooker came to Kew following a highly successful period in the chair of botany at Glasgow University. He quickly began to extend the gardens, arranging for the building of the now famous Palm House and establishing the Museum of Economic Botany. This volume reissues Hooker's popular guides to the gardens (sixteenth edition) and to the museum (third edition), both published in 1858. Illustrated throughout, these documents reveal the areas and specimens accessible to a receptive Victorian public. Hooker's ten volumes of Icones Plantarum (1837–54) have also been reissued in this series, along with many works by his son and equally accomplished successor, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911).

Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) was an eminent British botanist, best known for expanding and developing the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a leading centre of botanic research and conservation. At the age of nineteen he undertook an expedition to Iceland, his first outside Britain. Unfortunately, all his specimens and notes were destroyed in a fire on the return voyage (described in Volume 1), but he was able, with the help of the notes made by Sir Joseph Banks on an earlier expedition, to write this account. His work was first published privately in 1811, but a second edition was published in 1813 and is reproduced here. In 1809 England and Denmark-Norway were at war, and Iceland was a Danish dependency. Volume 2 offers Hooker's first-hand observations on the relationship between the two countries, and also includes detailed descriptions of the many volcanoes on the island.

Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) was an eminent British botanist, best known for expanding and developing the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a leading centre of botanic research and conservation. At the age of nineteen he undertook an expedition to Iceland, his first outside Britain. Unfortunately, all his specimens and notes were destroyed in a fire on the return voyage (described in Volume 1), but he was able, with the help of the notes made by Sir Joseph Banks on an earlier expedition, to write this account. His work was first published privately in 1811, but a second edition was published in 1813 and is reproduced here. Volume 1 gives a brief history of Iceland, before Hooker begins his detailed observations of the people and topography, and the flora and fauna he found. His accounts of the lives of the people of the island are of particular interest.