Reading the World
Regular price
€45.99
A01=Edwin David Rose
Australia natural history
Author_Edwin David Rose
Botany Bay
British Library
British Museum
British natural history
Captain James Cook
Category=PDX
Category=WNW
collecting natural history specimens
Daniel Solander
Darwin College faculty
eighteenth century British history
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Gilbert White of Selborne
global modernity
history of biology
history of medicine
history of natural history
History of Science
history of science in the eighteenth century
history of science in the nineteenth century
James Cook
Joseph Banks
National Library of Wales
Natural History Museum
natural history of Britain
natural history specimens
nature specimens
New Zealand natural history
North-Welsh Bittern
scientific exploration
Society for the History of Natural History
Swansea University Alumni
Thomas Pennant
University of Cambridge faculty
University of Pittsburgh Press
Product details
- ISBN 9780822967705
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2025
- Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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._x000D_
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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.
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.
