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“According to Tatiana Holway in The Flower of Empire, the Amazon water lily created a whole new world. That may seem a bit of a stretch, but Holway makes a lively case for this botanical colossus. . . . But what’s most fascinating about this tale is the way Holway twists and turns it through other botanical developments, from the invention of Wardian cases (which made transporting plants viable) to the manic obsession with flowers of 19th-century Britain, a nation in the midst of the Industrial Revolution.” —New York Times

“The discovery of the large water lily Victoria amazonica fascinated the botantical and social world of Great Britian and beyond. Holway takes many divergent paths, introducing the personalities involved and the botanical, architectural, and cultural themes centered on this fantastic water lily. Recommended.” —CHOICE

“Written with great verve and eloquence, Tatiana Holway tells her story of botanical adventure as robustly as the botanist who undertook the South American discovery of the great water lily, Victoria regia, and the cultural obsession it inspired. As a piece of horticultural and social history of Victorian England, The Flower of Empire is splendid: by turns surprising, exciting, and illuminating.” –John Lahr

“Tatiana Holway’s wonderful book about the Victoria regia is fascinating, impeccably written, and elegantly designed. Until I read it I had been most fascinated by the Chinese handkerchief tree, Davidia involucrata, but Holway’s book has led me reconsider.” –Simon Winchester

“A fresh and often witty account in which the author quotes freely from correspondence and periodicals to create a lively portrait of Victorian England and of the widespread passion for flowers and gardening at that time.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Tatiana Holway has a fascinating story of Victorian England to tell about a giant Amazonian water lily, the attempts to get it to grow in England and how it became the inspiration for the Crystal Palace. She has brought to life the extraordinary characters involved, from the German scientific traveler who came across the lily on New Year’s day 1837 in the interior of the then British Guiana to the botanical elite of Great Britain who tried to make it bloom.” –Peter Rivière, Oxford University

“Tatiana Holway has written a lively account of a fascinating series of events in Victorian England: the discovery and cultivation of an enormous tropical water lily that was named (after learned discussion) Victoria Regia, for the young and popular queen. The race to make the Amazonian flower bloom in England captured the public imagination, involved rivalries and disputes among leading figures, and had far-reaching consequences. With scholarly depth and humor, and in unfailingly readable prose, Holway shows how a botanical oddity could become an imperial, cultural, and political symbolic expression of the age.” –Steven Marcus, George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities Emeritus, Columbia University

“Teeming with intimate glimpses into the physically challenging world of international plant collecting, as well as the petty intricacies of royal politics.. Holway’s chronicle of Victorian society and the age of scientific discovery is a vibrant, revelatory exposé.” —Booklist

A narrative account of an astonishing flower and its sweeping impact on Victorian culture.

Tatiana Holway is an independent scholar and academic consultant with a doctorate in Victorian literature and society. Author of several studies of Dickens and popular culture, she also serves on the advisory board for the Nineteenth-Century Collections Online archive. Currently, she lives outside of Boston, where she pursues a passion for gardening.