Ellen’s story has been an inspiration to many. She has acted as a role model for young female botanists. She has encouraged young girls to consider science as a career. Her story inspired the Environmental Research Institute of University College Cork (UCC) to name their HQ building after her in 2022. For more on this see HERE
Her story of overcoming illness and balancing family caring responsibilities with her own interest of botany spans the centuries and is just as relevant today. Her determination with her care and attention to detail made her an excellent scientist. Her letter writing, essential as the means of communicating new knowledge to fellow botanists at the time, is also delightful and makes reading her letters quite special.
Ellen’s story and specifically her correspondence with fellow botanist Dawson Turner has been an inspiration to poets and artists as well as to a young Irish novelist. In 2020 A Quiet Tide, a historical novel written by Marianne Lee was published, based on Ellen’s story. It is a wonderful read and very moving.
Poet, Annette Skade, based in West Cork, launched her chapbook, Holdfast, based on Ellen’s story and seaweed, published by eco-journal Channel, at Bantry Library as part of the Ellen Hutchins Festival in August 2024. In parallel, Canadian poet, Clare Goulet, gave a reading from her book of poetry, Graphis Scripta / Writing Lichen at the Bantry Bookshop. It includes poems inspired by Ellen.
Laura McKenna has written a series of poems on Ellen, including one commissioned by the Environmental Research Institute of UCC in 2022 which is displayed in the Ellen Hutchins reading room.
Ellen is included in books covering botanists from the past. The most recent book to feature Ellen’s story is Moss and Lichen by Elizabeth Lawson, published in December 2024 by Reaktion Books. Just before that, Paul Whelan’s very impressive two volumes on Lichens of Ireland and Great Britain came out with a short biography of Ellen in it alongside other lichenologists.
Ellen has her place in a number of books about remarkable Irish women from the past. The most recent being Grainne Lyons’ Wild Atlantic Women – Walking Ireland’s West Coast published in May 2023. Ellen has a chapter in Clodagh Finn’s book Through Her Eyes, a new history of Ireland in 21 women.
The Irish Coastal Atlas, published in 2020 by Cork University Press, has a piece on Ellen, and the RTÉ series, Ireland’s Coast, aired in September 2024 included Ellen’s story told by botanical artist, Shevaun Doherty, on location on the shores of Bantry Bay and in Bantry House.
On this page, find out more about the publications, read a couple of poems and explore links to readings from the novel, and a Zoom talk with the novelist and one of the poets. (For sources of biographical information on Ellen see the Researching Ellen page.)
In 2020 A Quiet Tide, a historical novel written by a young Irish woman, was published based on Ellen’s story. It is a wonderful read and very moving.
The most recent book to include Ellen’s story is Grainne Lyons’ Wild Atlantic Women – Walking Ireland’s West Coast published in May 2023.
Ellen’s letters and specifically the correspondence between her and Dawson Turner recently inspired two poets.
The author, Marianne Lee, weaves fact and fiction together skilfully, telling Ellen’s story. Marianne said, “On first discovering Ellen Hutchins, it struck me that her short life encompassed many elements that might form a novel – her relentless pursuit of knowledge while overcoming illness and despair,… I wanted to portray a woman of many aspects, going beyond the established facts to explore Ellen’s thoughts, motivations and hopes, illuminating how she achieved so much in the face of such obstacles.”
By Elizabeth Lawson
A revealing exploration of mosses and lichens, unsung heroes of the natural world.
Elizabeth Lawson is a naturalist, writer and lecturer specializing in horticulture and natural history. She emailed recently to say that Ellen has a place of honour in the book and other female bryologists covered include Irishwoman, Matilda Knowles.
Irish lichenologist Paul Whelan’s two-volume book features over 720 species of lichen, each of which has a detailed description accompanied by a selection of excellent photos to aid identification. This book is the most comprehensive Irish lichen identification guide available to date.
As well as covering the biology and ecology of lichens, it also includes a section on history, with biographies of important Irish lichenologists including Ellen Hutchins.
Holdfast was launched at Bantry Library as part of the Festival. Holdfast is a poetic sequence arising from a study by poet, Annette Skade, of seaweed and the life and work of Ellen Hutchins. The setting of Bantry Library was very apt, as it was where Annette had first seen books and letters of Ellen’s that drew her into Ellen’s story.
Clare Goulet, a Canadian poet, ‘found’ Ellen towards the end of her research for a book of poetry on lichens and metaphor. She was fascinated by Ellen’s story and included two poems about her in the book – Graphis scripta Writing Lichen. Clare is continuing to research Ellen and visited Bantry at Festival time this year to learn more about her and to contribute to an event held at Bantry Bookshop – Plant Passions and Poetry.
At a crossroads in her life, Gráinne Lyons set out to travel Ireland’s west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering Irish women rooted in this landscape and explore their lives.
As Gráinne heads north from Cape Clear Island where her great-grandmother was a lacemaker, she considers Ellen Hutchins and others. Their homes – in places that are famously wild and remote – are transformed into sites of hope, purpose, opportunity and inspiration…
Over the course of a year Leif travelled round Britain and Ireland visiting botany hotspots. He writes engagingly about the botanical treasures he finds. He came to Glengarriff Woods in West Cork where Clare Heardman showed him the wealth of mosses growing there and he weaves this together with Ellen’s story.
This beautifully illustrated book explores sources for botany and gardening in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. It includes a chapter on Ellen Hutchins – How did her garden grow? – written by Madeline Hutchins, from a talk given for the Worth Library, Dublin. Discover the plants sent by James Mackay from the Botanic Garden at Trinity College Dublin for Ellen’s garden in Ballylickey and other clues about her garden, including her ‘rock’, from Ellen’s letters and her list of native plants.
Ellen has been included in a collection about inspirational Irish women, Through Her Eyes, by Clodagh Finn, published in 2019 by Gill Books, Dublin.
Told through the prism of the lives of twenty-one extraordinary women, it offers an alternative vision of Irish history, one that puts the spotlight on women whose contributions have been forgotten or overlooked.
The flowering of Irish Botanical Art by Patricia Butler.
A beautiful big book, it covers the 17th century to the present day and includes Ellen Hutchins and the festival’s ‘resident’ botanical artist, Shevaun Doherty. It tells the stories of a wide range of talented Irish botanical artists and the value of their plant portraits in botany.
Ellen is featured as an ‘Irish Connection’ in the children’s Great Irish Science Book by Professor Luke O’Neill, 2019.
Ellens work has not only inspired books, fiction & non fiction but also poetry.
Laura McKenna, poet and writer, composed a series of poems written in response to phrases in Ellen’s letters to English botanist, Dawson Turner, and his letters to her.
John FitzGerald’s poem, Velvet Horn, was written after a visit to the Ellen Hutchins exhibition in the Boole Library at UCC in 2018.
