She assisted him with his botanical publications, such as Encyclopedia of Gardening (1834). Loudon then arranged to meet the author, and, within six months, they were married. Webb’s novel was praised by the Scottish horticulturist John Claudius Loudon in one of the journals he then edited, The Gardener's Magazine. Surgeons and lawyers in her future world can be steam-powered automatons, and a kind of internet is predicted, while the revivification of the mummy is dealt with in scientific terms-galvanic shock rather than incantation.” Her court ladies wear trousers, but hair ornaments of controlled flame are not yet common, I think. As our Ian McKay wrote back in 2020, “Webb did not portray the future as an only slightly modified version of her own day, as do some early science fiction works, but introduces changes in technology, society, and even fashion. The Mummy is now considered a foundational work of science fiction-complete with a reanimated mummy and wild, ‘futuristic’ inventions, set in 2126. Like Mary Shelley, in whose footsteps she followed, author Jane Webb (1807-1858) was a young Englishwoman with an incredible imagination.
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