Loving Insects: John Abbotâ s Drawings and Natural History Collecting in the Atlantic World, 1760s-1840s

Beth Tobin

ISBN 10: 0820373575 / ISBN 13: 9780820373577

Published by University of Georgia Press, 2026

About this Item

New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days.

Seller Inventory # B9780820373577

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Loving Insects: John Abbotâ s Drawings and Natural History Collecting in the Atlantic World, 1760s-1840s
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820373575
• ISBN 13: 9780820373577
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 526 grams

About this title

Synopsis

John Abbot’s love of insects manifested itself in his exquisite watercolor drawings of butterflies, moths, beetles, cicadas, dragonflies, wasps, and spiders. Considered one of the finest illustrated entomological publications of its era, The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia combined those watercolors with Abbot’s terse notes that described his encounters with these creatures. Born in London in 1751, Abbot journeyed to the American South in 1773 to collect and draw insects and birds for natural history collectors in Britain. Although he had had ambitions as a young man to join the ranks of London’s natural history illustrators, he never returned to Britain. Instead, Abbot lived most of his long life in Georgia, where he made thousands of watercolor drawings of insects and supplied thousands of insect specimens to his British, European, and American clients. Despite his accomplishments as a naturalist and an artist, he is little known today. Loving Insects aims to rectify this omission by detailing Abbot’s activities as a natural history artist, a specimen hunter, and a naturalist and by claiming a space for him as a major figure in the story of early American natural history.

About the Author

BETH FOWKES TOBIN is professor emerita of English and women’s studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author and/or editor of several books, including The Duchess’s Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook’s Voyages and two award-winning books, Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting and Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760–1830. She lives and writes in Chicago.