, from
Sketches Maria Jacson showed early signs of gifts in relation to botany, through drawing, horticulture and plant experiments. Darwin describes a drawing she made in 1788 of a
Venus fly-trap, stating that she was "a lady who adds much botanical knowledge to many other elegant acquirements". Maria Jacson, who was part of the first generation of women science writers, is known for her writings on botany. Her publisher placed a commendation by both Darwin and Boothby ("so accurately explaining a difficult science in an easy and familiar manner") amongst the prefaces to her first book,
Botanical Dialogues (1797) written at the age of forty two, which was well received. Darwin also recommended Maria's work in his
Plan for the Conduct of Female Education of that year; But there is a new treatise introductory to botany called Botanic dialogues for the use of schools, well adapted to this purpose, written by M. E. Jacson, a lady well skilled in botany, and published by Johnson, London. However the book did not pass beyond a first edition, possibly because it was too advanced for the young audience for whom it was intended. For this reason she reworked the material into a more adult format in
Botanical Lectures By A Lady (1804). She described the latter as follows "a complete elementary system, which may enable the student of whatever age to surmount those difficulties, which hitherto have too frequently impeded the perfect acquirement of this interesting science". She was familiar with the Lichfield Botanical Society's translation of
Linnaeus'
System of Vegetables (1785), for which she intended her
Botanical Lectures as an introduction, but in a society that disapproved of
female education, and in particular the new sexual classification of plants, she trod warily between the Linnaeans and contemporary propriety. She completed three books on Linnaean botany and plant physiology and a fourth on horticulture. Her ''Florist's Manual
went into several editions. In her writing she faced two important obstacles, the backlash against educated women as typified by Richard Polwhele and his hostile satirical poem The Unsex'd Females'' (1798) and the moral concerns of a society that felt that such a delicate matter as the sexual reproduction of plants was inappropriate matter for 'female modesty' to be exposed to. Her sexual politics is evident in her resistance to Linnaeus' primacy of male sexual features in his classification system, emphasising that the female
pistil is of equal importance to the male
stamen. Given the constraints on women writers of the times her books were published anonymously 'by a lady' but the introduction of
Botanical Lectures is signed with the initials M.E.J. At the very end of the third edition (1827) of ''Florist's Manual
, appear the words "Maria Elizabeth Jackson, Somersal Hall, Uttoxeter, Staffordshire." Since this contains a number of errors, it is possible it was added by the publisher. The first edition ends with "M.E.J., Somersal Hall". Her earlier writing was very much under the influence of Darwin, however her Sketches of the Physiology of Vegetable Life'' (1811), marked a new independent direction, which she illustrated with her own drawings. Her appreciation of the constraints placed on women writers was apparent, even in her first book, where she wrote that women must avoid obtruding their knowledge upon the public. The world have agreed to condemn women to the exercise of their fingers, in preference to that of their heads; and a woman rarely does herself credit by coming forward as a literary character. She carefully ascribes the norms she describes as those of the 'world' rather than herself, but steps back from challenging them, by advising her daughters of the dangers of being known for what you know.
Botanical Dialogues 1797 Botanical Dialogues Between Hortensia and her Four Children, Charles, Harriet, Juliette and Henry Designed For the Use in Schools (1797) as the name suggests is constructed as conversations between her mother and her children. It makes reference to Darwin's versified botanical descriptions of
The Botanic Garden (1791). It utilises the sexual differences of plants to point out the different social roles that her sons and daughters are destined to fulfil by society on account of their sex, reflections that are often bitter. While outlining the social norms, she is also at pains to distance herself from them. == Works ==