Over the past century, books on basic research into ferns and lycophytes have largely focused on particular topics, floras, or methods of study. Setting the stage for understanding fern structure and evolution was a three-volume masterpiece by Frederick O. Bower, published between 1923 and 1928 by Cambridge University Press, and titled simply, The Ferns. In 1950, Cambridge also published Irene Manton's magnum opus, Problems of Cytology and Evolution in the Pteridophyta, establishing a new era of exploring the genetics and evolution of ferns and lycophytes. Books concentrating on laboratory studies have included Adrian Dyer's multi-authored The Experimental Biology of Ferns and Valayamghat Raghavan's Developmental Biology of Fern Gametophytes. Others, such as the detailed and well illustrated Ferns and Allied Plants published in 1982 by Rolla and Alice Tryon, were more systematically focused. Several books have captured the exchange of information at international conferences such as The Phylogeny and Classification of Ferns edited by A. C. Jermy, J. A. Crabbe, and B. A. Thomas in 1973, the Biology of Pteridophytes edited by A. Dyer and C. Page in 1985, a 1989 volume Systematic Pteridology edited by K. H. Shing and K. U. Kramer and based on a Beijing conference, and Pteridology in Perspective edited by J. M. Camus, M. Gibby, and R. J. Johns in 1996. These and others have synthesized ideas on particular areas of basic research, and helped to maintain excitement and communication about fern and lycophyte biology.