Priscilla Bury

Born Priscilla Falkner, in Rainhill, Lancashire. Mrs. Bury had no academic training in either Art or Botany. She grew up drawing plants raised in the greenhouses of her family home east of Liverpool. In 1829, she proposed to a few friends that she publish these drawings in a book called simply Drawings of Lilies. The drawings were to be engraved in aquatint and the book to be sold for 5 guineas. Two years later the first of ten parts was published, but with a new title called A Selection of Hexandrian Plants. the job of reproducing Bury’s drawings was done by Robert Havell, Jr. (1793-1878). He used the same aquatinting process he was concurrently using to complete John James Audubon’s Birds of America. Like Audubon’s project, Havell reproduced Bury’s drawings on large plates, perhaps life size. Havell was also the book’s publisher and Audubon himself was listed among its subscribers.