The Lost Orchid. A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession, Hardback

Sarah Bilston unfolds the story of orchid mania, the nineteenth-century craze among European and North American collectors vying to own the world’s most coveted flowers. Focusing the hunt for the so-called lost orchid, an especially vaunted flower native to Brazil, Bilston reveals the enormous human and environmental cost of a colonial obsession.

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Author(s): Sarah Bilston
• Illustration(s): 23 photos, 13 color photos
• Number of pages: 400
• Publication date: 2025
• Dimensions: 241 x 166 x 39
• Cover type: Hardback