Reading the World: British Practices of Natural History, 1760-1820 (Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century)

Rose, Edwin D.

ISBN 10: 0822948516 / ISBN 13: 9780822948513

Published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025

About this Item

HARDCOVER Acceptable - This is a significantly damaged book. It should be considered a reading copy only. Please order this book only if you are interested in the content and not the condition. May be ex-library. Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M0822948516Z4

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reading the World: British Practices of Natural History, 1760-1820 (Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century)
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822948516
• ISBN 13: 9780822948513
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries―a period that marked the emergence of a global modernity―educated landowners, or “gentlemen,” dominated the development of British natural history, utilizing networks of trade and empire to inventory nature and understand events across the world. Specimens, ranging from a Welsh bittern to the plants of Botany Bay, were collected, recorded, and classified, while books were produced in London and copies distributed and used across Britain, Continental Europe, the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. Natural history connected a diverse range of individuals, from European landowners to Polynesian priests, incorporating, distributing, synthesizing, and appropriating information collected on a global scale.

In Reading the World, Edwin D. Rose positions books, natural history specimens, and people in a close cycle of literary production and consumption. His book reveals new aspects of scientific practice and the specific roles of individuals employed to collect, synthesize, and distribute knowledge―reevaluating Joseph Banks’s and Daniel Solander’s investigations during James Cook’s Endeavour voyage to the Pacific. Uncovering the range of skills involved in knowledge production, Rose expands our understanding of natural history as a cyclical process, from the initial collection and identification of specimens to the formal publication of descriptions to the eventual printing of sources.

About the Author

Edwin D. Rose is a Leverhulme Trust early career research fellow in the School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at the University of Leeds and a Bye-Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.