Mrs. Edward Bury is one of those names that turns up in footnotes and rarely makes it to the headline. Yet her 1831 folio of tropical and other plants was substantial enough to be illustrated by some of the finest botanical draughtsmen of the age, and bold enough to publish under a name that was still, in the early Victorian era, a mild social risk for a woman. I came to her through her lilies, and stayed for the aquatints.
TL;DRPriscilla Susan Falkner Bury published A Selection of Hexandrian Plants in 1831 to 1834. It was illustrated by Robert Havell and Walter Fitch, printed as aquatints hand-coloured to her specification, and remains one of the finest botanical folios of the early Victorian era.
Key Facts
Who was Mrs. Edward Bury?
Priscilla Susan Falkner was born in 1799 and married Edward Bury, a railway engineer and businessman, around 1820. She was a keen amateur botanist and cultivated an extensive greenhouse at the family’s Lancashire estate. Her particular interest was the Hexandria, the Linnaean class that grouped together plants with six stamens, primarily the large and showy bulb families: lilies, amaryllises, tulips, and their relatives.
In 1831 she began publishing A Selection of Hexandrian Plants, an ambitious folio-format work that continued to 1834. It contained fifty-one plates of remarkable quality. She designed the work herself, directed the hand-colouring, and worked with some of the finest botanical artists and engravers of the age. Publishing a major botanical folio was a public act that required conviction. Priscilla Bury had it.
The Hexandrian Plants folio
A Selection of Hexandrian Plants is a folio of fifty-one plates covering lilies, amaryllises, nerines, hippeastrums, and related species. The plates were engraved as aquatints, then hand-coloured under Bury’s direction. Robert Havell, who had engraved Audubon’s Birds of America, was among the engravers. Walter Hood Fitch, who would go on to become the most prolific botanical illustrator of the Victorian era, also contributed plates.
The aquatint process produced tonal gradations of great softness. Combined with careful hand-colouring, the plates achieved a luminous quality that the botanical print tradition still values. The lilies in particular have a translucency that is difficult to achieve even in watercolour. You can read more about the technical tradition of the aquatint era in the history of botanical illustration.
Mrs. Bury and the women of early Victorian botanical art
Priscilla Bury was not alone among women who produced serious botanical work in the early nineteenth century. Jane Webb (later Loudon) had published botanical works in the same period. Anne Pratt was beginning the popular botanical writing that would make her famous. Margaret Cockburn was drawing the flora of India’s Nilgiri Hills.
What connected these women was that none of them occupied a formal institutional position. They were amateurs in the original sense, working from love rather than salary, without the library access and professional network that male botanists took for granted. Their work survived on its own merit, which is why we still have it. Bury’s folio is now held in major botanical library collections including Kew.
Drawing in the Bury tradition
What sets Bury’s folio apart from most botanical work of the period is the deliberate emphasis on beauty alongside accuracy. The Hexandrian plants she chose were among the showiest in cultivation. She selected specimens at their peak. The arrangements on the page have a compositional confidence that goes beyond the purely scientific. She was making art as much as science, and the plates show it.
When I draw a lily now, I think about the particular challenge she faced. The trumpet of a lily, especially in an aquatint, requires a tonal control that is unforgiving. The shadow inside the tube must be deep without blocking the light that makes the flower luminous. Getting that right in watercolour is hard enough. Doing it through the indirect medium of aquatint and hand-colouring required a different kind of precision entirely.
The lasting significance of her work
Priscilla Bury published her folio at a time when the botanical illustration tradition was at its most technically accomplished and most socially exclusive. Major folios were expensive to produce and expensive to buy. That she completed fifty-one plates over four years, using some of the best engravers available, and produced a work that still commands attention in botanical library catalogues nearly two centuries later, is a significant achievement.
Her name is less well known than it should be partly because she published as Mrs. Edward Bury rather than under her own name. The convention was normal for the time and has contributed to the obscurity. It is one of many small bureaucratic erasures that the history of women in botanical art is full of.
Styling Botanical Folio Art at Home
Prints in the tradition of the great botanical folios suit rooms that take them seriously. A lily study in the aquatint style belongs in a study, a sitting room, or a hallway where its scale and detail can be appreciated at a comfortable viewing distance. The soft tonal gradations of aquatint work beautifully against warm cream, stone, or deep green walls. Frame the print with a generous mat and a slim frame in natural wood or brass. One well-chosen plate in this tradition can dignify an entire room.
FAQ
Who was Mrs. Edward Bury?
Priscilla Susan Falkner Bury (1799–1872), an English amateur botanist who published A Selection of Hexandrian Plants in 1831–1834. The folio contained fifty-one aquatint plates of lilies and related plants, engraved by Robert Havell and Walter Fitch, and hand-coloured under her direction.
What is an aquatint?
An aquatint is an intaglio printing technique that produces tonal gradations rather than lines. A metal plate is treated with acid-resistant resin, then etched in stages to create areas of different tone. The resulting prints have a soft, wash-like quality very different from line engraving, which made them well-suited to the delicate gradations of botanical illustration.
Where are Mrs. Bury’s Hexandrian Plants held today?
Copies of the folio are held in major botanical library collections including the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Natural History Museum, and several university libraries. Individual plates have appeared at auction and are held in private collections. Complete copies of the folio are rare.
How is this print made, and how does it reach me?
There are two formats. The digital download is a high-resolution file that you print yourself, at home or at a print shop; no physical item is shipped. The fine-art print is printed to order on archival paper or canvas, framed or unframed, in sizes from small prints to over 150 cm (60 inches), and delivered to your door.
Why is Mrs. Bury’s work not better known?
She published as Mrs. Edward Bury rather than under her own name, which was the convention of the time but has contributed to her obscurity in later references. The folio is well known in botanical library circles but rarely appears in popular histories of botanical illustration.
Mrs. Bury is one of the women I gathered in The Living Canvas, alongside Margaret Cockburn and others whose work survived the obscurity their names were assigned to. The same stories are read aloud on the companion audiobook on Spotify. Her lilies were among the finest of her century. They deserve to be known.
