Will I love Chrysalis?

Maria Sibylla Merian was a 17th-century painter and naturalist who traveled with her daughter at the age of 52, in the year 1699, to observe and paint the life-cycle of butterflies and other insects in the Suriname jungles.

She was an extraordinary woman, often referred to as "the Mother of Ecology", and this is a beautiful book telling her story.

As it happens, Maria played an important role in cracking the mystery of metamorphosis, going back to the philosophers and naturalists of ancient Greece.

I had never heard of Maria Sybilla Merian before researching my latest book, but her life was amazing.

A brilliant artist, Merian lived an unconventional life—even before going to the Dutch colony of Surinam in 1698 accompanied only by her daughter. There Merian produced stunning and important works, illustrating the life cycles of insects and relationships between insect and plant species.

Merian and her work deserve to be better known.

This book details the life of sixteenth/seventeenth-century naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian. A woman incredibly ahead of her time, her detailed illustrations and hand-painted etchings depicted the life cycles of insects and animals in their habitats she encountered both at home and in her travels to Dutch Surinam. Her early contributions to the field of entomology are recognized to this day and reading about a woman of that era traveling independently, undertaking scientific study, and publishing her work is both fascinating and inspiring. Merian’s work is exquisite, and I definitely consider her unique work as inspiration for my own.… show more.