Gender at Work in Victorian Culture: Literature, Art and Masculinity Book

"We have the three ranks", writes John Ruskin, on the different ways in which someone might perceive a primrose. Firstly, "the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing more than itself ' a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd around it."

This is the quote which opens The Poet as Botanist. Ruskin was writing in Modern Painters, and, in the context of visual art, such a ranking might well make sense. If you're painting something, you want to see the object as it is, but also to see it as the many things that it could be ' to feel the associations, but not to let them master you. But it seems that Ruskin might have meant to apply his little hierarchy to more than just painters, and that made me sufficiently indignant ' what's wrong, exactly, with seeing a primrose as a fairy's shield? ' to draw me in.

M. M. Mahood's book ' collection of essays, really ' is peppered with these sorts of quotes, many examples of botanically-inspired poetry, and thorough analyses. In the analyses, Mahood writes masterfully, as the life-long academic she was, and with a simplicity of explication that can only come from a total understanding of her topic. Several essays are on individual poets and are necessarily somewhat biographical, but the focus is always primarily on their poetry and their reasons for writing it. And the poets she chooses are fascinating ' or, at least, Mahood makes them seem so. The dour Crabbe ("I hate these long green lanes; there's nothing seen / in this vile country but eternal green"), the physician-cum-poet Erasmus Darwin, whom Ruskin would have firmly slotted into Rank 2 ("That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme", grumbles Byron), the scientific accuracy, and clear talent, of D. H. Lawrence.

Mahood colours the discussion with plenty of historical context. For example, apparently the Linnaean classification system, when it reached England, was viewed with suspicion, not just because it replaced colourful local names with incomprehensible Latin, but because it was a moral hazard. "I have several times seen boys and girls botanising together," writes an alarmed Revernd Polwhele, on the dangers of teaching girls to classify flowers. (Ruskin was one of many to attempt to introduce his own system, but didn't complete it: in a letter he wrote that he was mostly pleased with it apart from "a large class called Tiresomes, which were plants who didn't know their own minds". Imagine the classroom in a world where Ruskin's system took over: "Today, children, we learn about the tiresomes"!)

The steady pace of the essays breaks down a little in the final chapter, Poetry and Photosynthesis. Here Mahood gives a broader overview of several poets, including more modern ones. The writing is as excellent as in the other chapters, but the information density increases dramatically ' it feels as if there was a lot more to say, but not enough space to say it.

The book is not an easy read. I read it, slowly and patchily, over the course of eight months. But it's a lot of fun, and Mahood's passion for the topic is infectious.