Florilegia, a fictional dialogue with the works of Anna Atkins: How does a fictional response to the works of Anna Atkins provide a new retelling of her work?

The botanical cyanotype albums of Anna Atkins have remained in The Royal Society, The Linnean Society, The British Library and the V&A since she donated them in 1852. Daughter of famous scientist J.G. Children, president of the Royal Society, Atkins made over 100, uncredited, illustrations for Children’s translation of Lamarck’s Genera of Shells (1823). She donated her cyanotype albums after her father’s death, where they were received as a tribute to him and in the Royal Society they continue to be filed under his, not her name. There is no biography of Atkins beyond that of a dutiful daughter to her father.

Florilegia is my practice-led response to the botanical cyanotype albums of Anna Atkins. It consists of my own cyanotype album and three chapters of creative writing in a subversive narrative that explores a retelling of Atkins’ hidden biography. Each chapter is accompanied by an explicatory clef that seeks to anchor the fiction in current and historical debates.

Following Atkins’ lead and creating my own cyanotype album led to the discovery that Atkins used the techniques of the nineteenth century album maker to fake her cyanotypes; cutting and suturing her specimens to create chimeras. In Florilegia, I use these same techniques to create a collaged fiction. Employing the methodology of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) I give visibility to the voiceless female using the objects that surround her. This, in turn brings to light a subversive role for the dutiful daughter Atkins; the Handmaid.

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