I haven't said too much about 'Myco Book Club' here on my blog, but it's something I've been having fun with over on Twitter for six months or so now. Nathan Smith was kind enough to invite me to write an article about it for the British Mycological Society newsletter, which I have reproduced here.
Response to Coronavirus: #MycoBookClub
What did I do during The Great Lockdown of 2020? Well, I started an exceedingly niche social media based book club – a vehicle for chatting with folks on the internet about fungi and books – and I called it The Mycological Book Club, or #MycoBookClub for short.
Back in April, needing something to stop me constantly scrolling through the news, I found refuge in The Biodiversity Heritage Library: the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. It contains a vast number of mycological books and journals – freely available to browse online – the bulk of which date from prior to 1923. “The past is a foreign country…”, as L.P. Hartley famously said, and delving into this historic literature was pure escapism.
One book which caught my attention was Mordecai Cubitt Cooke’s ‘Rust, Smut, Mildew & Mould: An Introduction to the Study of Microscopic Fungi’ (Fifth ed. 1886). M.C. Cooke had developed an interest in microscopic fungi after founding The Society of Amateur Botanists in 1862 and it was said that during the group’s excursions, “when he was not pulling at his pipe he was singing” (Ramsbottom, 1915); the image of this group of naturalists, exploring the countryside around London and singing as they went, I found very cheering.
I was lifted by Cooke’s soaring rhetoric, such as this from pages 188-189:
“We might traverse the primeval forests of the new world, and explore the unknown regions of the old, and not encounter so much to excite our admiration, or cause our wonder, as lies about our feet at home; marvels which we tread beneath our feet, or kick from our path, because they appear to be only rotten sticks, withered grass, and decaying leaves.”
More than 130 years after it was written, this seemed particularly apt, while many of us were Staying At Home. I felt encouraged to venture upon a journey of my own and whiled away a happy afternoon investigating a rust on the Dog Violets by my back door.
But I missed chatting about mycology and wanted to hear other people’s opinions about this book I’d just read. That’s when I had the idea to set up ‘The Mycological Book Club’ on Twitter, with the handle @MycoBookClub.
Twitter isn’t everyone’s choice of social media platform. But I like the opportunities it affords to follow subjects I’m interested in and engage with others in an open forum; you could think of it as the ‘Hyde Park Corner’ of social media websites. It was a matter of minutes to set up a Twitter profile: an online home for ‘Myco Book Club’. And although Twitter can seem like a sprawling and chaotic place, simply choosing a hashtag – #MycoBookClub – makes it possible to link people’s comments and conversations on that topic together.
I decided I would organise it like a proper book club and settled on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:30pm as the allotted time when #MycoBookClub would take place on Twitter. This would be something to look forward to, at a time when everything was cancelled. A handful of mycologists I know agreed to read the book and give the Twitter-based book club format a whirl.
The allotted Tuesday, 5 May, eventually came – and it felt like such a tonic to just chat about Cooke and his book for an hour or so, through the medium of ‘tweets’ which allow for text up to 280 characters and the addition of images.
This is how we wrapped up that first month’s #MycoBookClub:
Thanks for joining in with #MycoBookClub, @NathanProbably @TuddenhamEdward @aplin_nick & @FayrnHawk! Wasn't sure if it was gonna work - but it's been great chatting mycology & MC Cooke with you all.
— The Mycological Book Club (@MycoBookClub) May 5, 2020
There are loads more books on @BioDivLibrary if this has left you wanting more! pic.twitter.com/D4WzIJgs4e
There were enough people interested to warrant doing it again, and in June we talked about another of Cooke’s publications, ‘Vegetable Wasps & Plant Worms’ (1892), while admiring illustrations of some of these fungal parasites in ‘Selecta Fungorum Carpologia’ (Tulasne & Tulasne, 1861-1865).
By this point, I was thoroughly immersed in Cooke’s writing. I delighted in dipping into Hardwicke’s Science-Gossip, one of the journals Cooke edited. But I couldn’t help thinking, “Where the women at?” (Cooke’s biographer, Mary P. English, relates that Cooke was not very enlightened in this regard; successfully fighting off a motion to admit ladies to the Quekett Microscopical Club in 1868).
By chance, I saw came across reference to another nineteenth century mycologist in the ‘Mycological Word of the Day’ group on Facebook: Anna Maria Hussey. So in July we took at look at her ‘Illustrations of British Mycology’ (1847), published under the name Mrs. T.J. Hussey.
I was utterly charmed by Hussey. The depth of her knowledge seemed to me especially remarkable given the constraints of the times she lived in; her illustrations are beautiful and full of carefully observed details. Her writing suggests she picked up much knowledge from reading “Le citoyen Paulet” (1740-1826), a French mycologist who apparently investigated the edibility of fungusses by feeding them to dogs. Paulet was working during the period of the French Revolution, which Hussey reflects on as an aside in her description of Mitrula paludosa:
“… that era of popular fury … [when] it seems to us that men could have had no time for Agarics, when revolutionary commotion surrounded them; the mind is so engrossed by prominent objects of horror, that we can scarcely imagine a background where innocent pursuits could be carried on, and peaceful occupations pursued; so however it was; the stormy tide raged round the opposing rocks, there was “distress and perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring,” but those who kept themselves aloof in placid bays and recesses where the still waters rippled quietly, carried on as usual their unpolitical studies.”
It seemed to me a welcome reminder that – while the news reports roll in of another “grim milestone” – there can be time for Agarics.
You can see the full list of books that The Mycological Book Club has dipped into so far here, on our virtual bookshelf: https://mycobookclub.blogspot.com/
You can find The Mycological Book Club on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/MycoBookClub. On Tuesday 3 November, from 7:30pm, we will be taking John Bolton’s ‘An History of Fungusses, Growing About Halifax’ (1788) as a jumping in point for exploring illustration in mycology. Everyone is welcome to join in, you just need to get yourself onto Twitter and be sure to include the hashtag #MycoBookClub with your tweets.
With thanks to Nick Aplin, Lukas Large, Fay Newberry, Nathan Smith, Edward Tuddenham and everyone else who’s joined in with #MycoBookClub; and the illustrator Kelsey Sconberg who kindly provided us with a logo.
Links & References
Biodiversity Heritage Library [website]. URL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Bolton, J. (1788-91). An History of Fungusses, Growing About Halifax. URL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/25501#page/7/mode/1up
Cooke, M.C. (1886). Rust, Smut, Mildew & Mould: An Introduction to the Study of Microscopic Fungi 5th Ed. URL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3269578#page/7/mode/1up
Cooke, M.C. (1892). Vegetable Wasps and Plant Worms. URL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/80038#page/5/mode/1up
English, M.P. (1987). Mordecai Cubitt Cooke: Victorian Naturalist, Mycologist, Teacher & Eccentric. Biopress Ltd.
Hussey, Mrs T.J. (1847). Illustrations of British Mycology. URL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2976511#page/13/mode/1up
The Mycological Book Club [Twitter profile]. URL: https://twitter.com/home
Mycological Word of the Day [Facebook group]. URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mycologicalwordoftheday
Ramsbottom, J. (1915). Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1825-1914). Transactions of the British Mycological Society 5 (1), p. 169-185. URL: http://www.cybertruffle.org.uk/cyberliber/59351/0005/001/0169.htm
Tulasne, L.R. & Tulasne, C. (1861-1865). Selecta Fungorum Carpologia. URL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34126228#page/239/mode/1up
