Cover Photo: An image of tea leaves in containers
Photograph by tsaiga/Unsplash

Taking History Personally: Tea, Selfhood, and the Story of Empire

Tea plants—and the drinks we make from them—carry so many meanings.

Camellia sinensis

Thea sinensisThea boheaThea viridis Camellia sinensis

A Journey to the Tea Countries of China

TeachathéTeeteachaishaycha

bothered

tea

Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian-Taiwanese author, environmental historian, and winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Banff Mountain Book Award, the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, and the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award. She is the author of two books of nature writing, Turning and Two Trees Make a Forest, and co-editor of the essay collection Dog Hearted. Jessica has a PhD in Environmental History and Aesthetics and is the founding editor of The Willowherb Review. She teaches creative writing at the University of Cambridge.