South African librarian and biographer. Mary Gunn not only built almost single-handedly the most comprehensive botanical library in Africa, but through years of meticulous research became a leading authority on the lives of the continent's early botanists and plant collectors, work that culminated in 1981 with the publication of Botanical Exploration in Southern Africa in collaboration with Dr Leslie Codd. Born in Scotland, she emigrated as a child to South Africa where her parents settled in Pretoria. There in 1916, at age 17, she took a job as typist in the Department of Agriculture's Division of Botany and was put in charge of its library, then so small it barely had enough books to fill a shelf.
Excited by the world of botanical books – and armed with considerable powers to persuade people of their worth – she rapidly became an authority on old botanical literature. One of her earliest finds was Descriptiones pantarum ex capite bonae spei by P.J. Bergius, a book that once belonged to Georg Forster, the young German who had sailed on the Resolution with Captain Cook on his second circumnavigation of the world in 1772. Inscribed in the book were notes from botanist W.H. Harvey, whose book Genera of South African Plants (1838) was also acquired by Gunn. It is considered to be the first scientific work to be published in South Africa and contains handwritten notes by the author. Another of her valuable acquisitions is a full set of Curtis's Botanical Magazine published from 1790 onwards. She also managed to purchase £200 the four volumes of Redoute's Les Liliacées – a treasure that was brought home to South Africa in the baggage of General J.C. Smuts; a frequent Division of Botany visitor, after he had attended the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
In addition to her book on early botanical explorers, Mary Gunn wrote numerous articles over the years for Veld & Flora and provided valuable research information to writers of The Flowering Plants of Africa series. In 1976 she was awarded The Bolus Medal and in 1969 the library she served for almost 60 years, was dedicated to her.
