Anne Pratt (1806–1893)

Anne Pratt was a daughter of Robert Pratt, a wholesale grocer from Kent, and his wife Sara Bundock. Poor health and a bad knee in childhood kept her indoors, and she became a voracious reader. She was encouraged to occupy herself by drawing. Dr. Dods, a family friend, offered to teach her botany, a subject she took up with great enthusiasm. In her early thirties, she secretly wrote her first book, and sent it off to a publisher -- it was published in 1838 as The Field, The Garden, and the Woodland. It was the first of some 20 botany and bird books that she wrote and illustrated, including Flowering Plants and Ferns of Great Britain (1855). She collaborated with William Dickes, an engraver skilled in the chromolithograph process. Her works continue to be valued by botanists today. In 1866, she married John Pearless, and moved with him to Redhill in Surrey and stopped publishing.