Curtis, a Quaker apothecary, was demonstrator of botany to the Company of Apothecaries, and had gardens at Bermondsey, Lambeth, and Brompton. The British flora in Curtis' three private botanical gardens were described in the Flora londinensis. The title of the work shown here also promised plants that grew, not in well-ordered botanical gardens, but rather in the "wild around London." Note Curtis' role as self-publisher of this work.

Where he emphasized British flora in his own gardens, Curtis' Magazine served as a vehicle for introducing and describing new, exotic plants.

As the full title indicated, this was a "work intended for the use of such ladies, gentlemen, and gardeners, as wish to become scientifically acquainted with the plants they cultivate." With various name changes, this periodical publication has continued to the present.

This posthumous edition "arranged from the manuscripts in the possession of [Curtis'] son-in-law," also bore some resemblance to Curtis' Companion to the Botanical magazine; or, A familiar introduction to the study of botany, being the substance of a course of lectures, chiefly explanatory of the Linnæan system, read at the Botanic garden, Lambeth-Marsh (printed for the author in 1788) and his Lectures on botany, as delivered to his pupils (1803-1804).