This week on Shelfmarks Zoë Comyns tries to get a sense of the immense work done by Robert Lloyd Praeger. From his early days in Co. Down, tramping through the Mourne Mountains to the thousands of miles he walked across Ireland studying botanics, to his contribution to 800 publications and his 24 books RL Praeger is probably considered Ireland’s most influential naturalist.

Zoë’s guest this week on Shelfmarks is poet Jane Clarke. Jane grew up in Co Roscommon and came to writing after a career in psychotherapy. She moved to Wicklow almost 25 years ago and Zoë visited her there in her home and took a walk up a lane known as Fairy Lane or Lousy Land and listeners will hear two specially commissioned poems about her neighbour and quarrymen.

You can read more about Jane Clarke on her website: http://www.janeclarkepoetry.ie/

To write this episode Zoë read The Way that I Went and A Populous Solitude by Robet Lloyd Praeger, Irish Topographical Botany and the Clare Island Survey, as well as the invaluable biography of Praeger The Life of a Naturalist by Sean Lysaght published by Four Courts Press. She also read A Farrington's obituary of Praeger in the Irish Naturalist Journal, Vol 11 (1954).

The readings in this episode are by Declan Brennan.