Emily Margaret Wood: Botany, illustration, nature writing and teaching in Liverpool at the end of the long nineteenth century

Emily Margaret Wood (1865-1907) is today best known to botanists for her extensive set of illustrations in the 1902 Flora of the Liverpool District. In addition, she is a minor name in the history of British ceramics as an artist working at the Della Robbia Pottery in Birkenhead. Here we outline her life and career, showing that she had a much wider influence on botany in Liverpool around 1900, especially via the Liverpool Naturalists’ Field Club. Her botanical illustration work was more extensive than just the Flora illustrations – and includes a set of surviving water colours of fungi of the Liverpool area. She also worked in local journalism, writing country diary style essays for local papers, and as a teacher of botany and Nature Study. In addition, she produced a British edition of George Atkinson’s Nature Study text, First Studies of Plant Life, a couple of years before her premature death aged 42.