MALING, E.A. Miss. In-Door Plants, and how to grow them, for the drawing-room, balcony, and greenhouse: containing clear instructions by which ladies may obtain, at a small expense, a constant supply of flowers. First edition. viii, 150pp., coloured lithograph frontispiece by Day and Son. A very good copy in slightly rubbed original gilt decorated green cloth. Bookseller’s ticket of J. Cox, Aberystwith (sic). small 8vo. Smith, Elder and Co. 1861. ~ “... I think it is only necessary to show how small an expenditure is required, either of time or money, to induce many ladies to begin to grow them... It is important to have some such fixed plan, in order that the plants may be in harmony with each other and form a well-assorted group, and also that the lady gardener may not be liable to find herself at one time overstocked with favourite plants in blossom, and at another time in a state of comparative destitution.” Hopefully the contemporary owner of this book, Eliza Winter, heeded her advice. Miss Maling also wrote a weekly column on "Indoor Gardening," which ran from January 1862 through to May 1863 in the Gardeners' Chronicle. She never revealed her forenames, and identified herself only through her initials. I have however discovered that Elisabeth Ann Maling (1830-1866), was the eldest daughter of Thomas James Maling and Jemima Bromley. She was a noted horticulturalist, and in 1865 married Count de Vandalin Mniszeck, an Austrian noble. Her father’s first wife was Harriet Darwin, daughter of Erasmus Darwin.