[KENT, Elizabeth]. Flora Domestica, or the Portable Flower-Garden; with directions for the treatment of plants in pots; and illustrations from the works of the poets. xxxiv, [2], 396pp., half-title. A very good copy bound in later 19th century dark green morocco, with gilt borders, gilt foliate corner-pieces, and the spine gilt in compartments. Marbled end-papers, all-edges-gilt. Some slight foxing. 8vo. for Taylor and Hessey. 1823. ~ Elizabeth Kent (1790–1861) lived in London, but wanted to live in the country. Dismayed at the number of pot-plants given to her which failed to thrive, she published her useful guide to container or 'portable' gardening in 1823. She had taught herself botany and foreign languages, and her sister's marriage to the radical poet and journalist Leigh Hunt brought her into contact with the Romantic circles. The book combines practical instruction on how to select plants which will thrive in containers, and in the polluted air of cities, with quotations on gardening and flowers from ancient as well as modern authors such as Keats and her friend Shelley. Her common-sense advice on plants from adonis to zygophyllum and on their care - use rainwater if possible, but never over-water or let pots stand in water, for example - is equally valid today. “In 1823 Taylor and Hessey published an innocuous handbook for the suburban gardener. The author of Flora Domestica, they announced in a puff piece in the London Magazine, ‘has devoted much time, and talent, to the subject on which his heart is set’. ‘We have no doubt’, their reviewer noted, ‘that our readers will rise from the perusal of it quite satisfied’ (London Magazine, 147). In the Preface to Flora Domestica, its unnamed author was equally understated about the purpose of her volume, and her own botanical skills: ‘Many a plant have I destroyed, like a fond and mistaken mother, by an inexperienced tenderness; until, in pity to these vegetable nurslings and their nurses, I resolved to obtain and to communicate such information as should be requisite for the rearing and preserving a portable garden in pots’. The London Magazine qualified its approval of the volume’s ‘poetical passages’ by quoting the thoughts of an unnamed correspondent: ‘how pretty is the allusion to poor Keats’s grave! Hazlitt says, the early writers described flowers the best; perhaps they do; and, I think, they are mentioned too sparingly, and the living writers almost (will vanity let me own it) too much’ (London Magazine, 148). Despite this quibble however, the unnamed correspondent professed to be ‘pleased with the mention the author has made of me, and not only pleased, but proud of it’ (London Magazine, 148).