Jane Loudon

Set in 2126, The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century explores a society led by advanced technology but driven by ego, greed and self-preservation. It’s a vivid clash of genres featuring an old tale with a new twist. In the distant future, society has become enthralled by technology. It’s an integral part of life that has changed the way humans interact. Autonomous machines have a visible presence, taking critical jobs in the workforce. Doctors and lawyers have been replaced by steam-powered devices, as well as farmers who no longer plant or plow. The author presents an early form of the internet that can connect anyone at any time. With all these advancements, mankind has become detached and corrupt. It’s up to Cheops, a reanimated corpse, to make a way in this questionable age. Jane Loudon was a young visionary writer who was ahead of her time. Her version of The Mummy features a speculative world that eerily embodies twenty-first century society. It’s a brilliant work that exposes humanity at its core. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century is both modern and readable.

Reproduction of the original: Mrs. Loudon's Entertaining Naturalist by Jane Loudon

Reproduction of the original: Botany for Ladies by Jane Loudon

Reproduction of the original: Botany for Ladies by Jane Loudon

Reproduction of the original: Mrs. Loudon's Entertaining Naturalist by Jane Loudon

Published anonymously in three volumes when the author was only seventeen years old, The Mummy is, as she describes it herself, a strange, wild novel that-to an audience nearer her future than when Loudon imagined it-is filled with striking similarities to our modern world, including a form of the internet. But it is also filled with brilliant flights of fancy: her court ladies wear hair ornaments of controlled flame; surgeons and lawyers may be steam-powered automatons; people holiday by moving their entire home on rails. The visionary technological setting contrasts with a morality seemingly gone awry as it falls to the reanimated mummy Cheops to try to find a role in this corrupted society. A lost curio of Victorian futurism waiting to be discovered, The Mummy is as bizarre and entertaining as it's premise promises-and more.

Inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this foundational work of science fiction was also written by an imaginative young woman and published in the early 19th century. This tale, however, has a futuristic setting of 2126 and its "monster," an intelligent mummy, serves as a friend and counselor to mankind. The author's intriguingly prescient visions of social and technological advances include a form of the internet.

Jane Loudon (1807–58), the Mrs Beeton of the Victorian gardening world, wrote several popular books on horticulture and botany specifically for women. Her enthusiasm for plants and gardening was encouraged by her husband, the landscape designer John Claudius Loudon, whom she married in 1830. Her Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (also reissued in this series) was enormously successful, and she followed it up in 1842 with this volume on botany, in which she uses the natural system of classification. The 'grand object' of the work is 'to enable my readers to find out the name of a plant when they see it … or, if they hear or read the name … to make that name intelligible to them'. She takes her readers through the botanical orders, using a familiar plant as an exemplar for each, and then presents de Candolle's systematic description of plant species.

Jane Loudon (1807–58), the Mrs Beeton of the Victorian gardening world, wrote several popular books on horticulture and botany, specifically for women. She is also remembered as the author of The Mummy! - an early work of science fiction - and as editor of The Ladies' Companion. Her knowledge of plants and gardening was gained from her husband, the landscape designer John Claudius Loudon, whom she married in 1830, and from attending the lectures of the botanist John Lindley. Her notes from these were published as articles in John Loudon's Gardener's Magazine. This book, first published in 1840, was an immediate success, selling 1,350 copies on the day of publication and more than 200,000 in total. Written in the approachable style typical of her works, it covers all the elements of horticulture, and helped to encourage many Victorian women to take up gardening as a hobby.