Anna Maria Hussey

Anna Maria Hussey, née Reed (5 June 1805 – 26 August 1853) was a British mycologist, writer, and illustrator.

[2] Hussey was a strong willed woman who approached her personal researches with an enthusiasm that she did not quite feel for her role as a clergyman's wife.

[3] During her most creative period, she maintained an active and candid correspondence with her mycological mentor, Reverend M. J. Berkley, which provides many details of her daily life and work.

She was also acquainted with Charles Badham, a scholar of classical literature, and mycologist M. C. Cooke, who cites Hussey in his 1875 Fungi: Their Nature and Uses and called her "friend".

[4] Hussey (together with her younger sister, Frances Reed) developed an expertise in fungi, corresponding with and sending specimens to the leading mycologist of the day, Rev.

[6] She and her sister made watercolour paintings of some of the species they encountered and in 1847 a number of Hussey's illustrations were published as plates in A treatise on the esculent funguses of England by Charles David Badham.

In the introduction to Illustrations, she notes that: "A basket is in the first place needful, and if the student should leave home without one, a profusion of lovely and rare objects will be certain to strew his path; in which case there are but two alternatives, to dissect on the spot, always an imperfect operation, or to carry away the spoil in hat or handkerchief, when on arrival at home, a heterogeneous mass of caps, stems, etc., presents itself—disjecta membra!

The medical register and subsequent autopsy indicate that she was suffering from delirium tremens caused by prolonged use of alcoholic liquor, and died from a stroke.