The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants

Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow and Associate Professor at Downing College, University of Cambridge. Her academic books include Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Blood Matters (2018) and Botanical Culture and Popular Belief in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 2024). She also writes fiction and non-fiction about early modernity and our changing relationship to the natural world.

Part I. Historical Periods: 1. The ancient world: us and them Rebecca Armstrong; 2. Inspective fruits: plants in early Christian literature Clare Lapraik Guest; 3. Plant lives in the literatures of medieval England Michael Bintley; 4. Plant-lore in the botanical renaissance: grafting myth and science Todd Borlik; 5. Literary plants, 18th – 19th century Stephen Bending; 6. Portraits of plants, 19th – 20th century Claudia Tobin; Part II. Anglophone Literary Forms: 7. Useful books: herbals and gardening manuals Jessica M. Rosenberg; 8. Shakespeare's plants then and now Bonnie Lander Johnson; 9. Metaphysical subjects and cavalier objects in 17th century plant lyric Robert N. Watson; 10. Speculative fiction and the contemporary novel T. S. Miller; 11. Aftermath: thinking and healing with grass in contemporary poetry Holly Corfield Carr; Part III. Global Regions: 12. Plants in the French and Francophone literary tradition Giulia Pacini; 13. Early American plant writing Michael Ziser; 14. Plants in the literatures of Latin America and the Caribbean Lesley Wylie; 15. Plants in the literatures of Australia John Charles Ryan; 16. Plants in the literatures of Southern Africa Dan Wylie; 17. Lotus: an un-still life in the literatures of China Xiaofei Tian; 18. Plants in the literatures of India Sourit Bhattacharya; 19. Tree-rings of Middle Eastern poetry Efe Khayyat.