7:57 a.m., Aug. 19, 2009----Flowers and books were often linked in American literature throughout the 19th century, and a University of Delaware graduate student in English, Alison Klaum, is researching their use and role. Her dissertation is entitled “Pressing Flowers: Remembrance, Identity and Floral Culture in Late 18th and Early 19th Century America.”

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This has been a busy summer for Klaum. She has received a William Reese Company Fellowship to the Library Company of Philadelphia to work on her dissertation and also was invited to participate in the Early American Literature and Materials Texts Initiative Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania on the history of the book. She was invited to attend a seminar by the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass., as well as the Public Engagement and Material Culture Institute at UD.

Klaum is examining friendship albums and diaries where flowers were literally pressed, as well as poems, paintings, drawings and messages to friends that were inspired by flowers. She also is looking at literary works where floral symbols are incorporated into the texts.

There were popular flower books at this time, Klaum said, that often included sentimental poems and writings but also acted as botanical guides and flower dictionaries. These volumes were frequently used to press real flowers. Klaum is interested in how these flower books were marketed and used by readers and the techniques used to print them.

One of the issues Klaum discovered in her research is how destructive the flowers are to the books used to press them. For some books there is no link between the flowers and the book so that removing the flowers is not an issue, but in the friendship albums and flower poetry books, there are complex relationships that the pressed flowers represent, Klaum said.

This summer at the Library Company, Klaum has had an unusual opportunity to examine printed impressions of leaves by Benjamin Franklin and his friend, Joseph Breintnall.

Breintnall printed the impressions of leaves on paper to document them as a botanical project. Franklin, on the other hand, had a secret process for printing leaves on paper currency. Scholars believe he most likely used a metal printing plate to reproduce the intricate details of leaf images, making them virtually impossible to replicate, preventing counterfeiting, according to Klaum. She is comparing their leaf prints to other botanical representations in the 18th century, such as illustrated natural histories.

“I am researching all these sources to theorize about how they united culture and nature, science and art, as well as their influence on later 18th and 19th century floral representations,” she said.

A graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Klaum has her master's degree from UD. Her adviser is Martin Brückner, associate professor of English.

Article by Sue Moncure