The Signature of All Things: A Novel

Gilbert, Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0670024856 / ISBN 13: 9780670024858

Published by Riverhead Books, 2013

About this Item

Riverhead Books, 2013; first edition, with full number line, SIGNED by Gilbert; 501pp. Binding is tight, sturdy and square; corners of boards and ends of spine bumped; titling remains bright and bold. Wear at corners and ends of spine; light rubbing. Interior is free of previous owner markings. Ships same or next day from Dinkytown, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Seller Inventory # 330556

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Signature of All Things: A Novel
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670024856
• ISBN 13: 9780670024858
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 22 ounces
• Signed: Signed by Author
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, and City of Girls

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry’s brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father’s money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma’s research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction—into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist—but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.

Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe—from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who—born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution—bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert’s wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.

About the Author

Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic, Eat Pray Love, and The Signature of All Things, as well as several other internationally bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, City of Girls, comes out in June, 2019.