Epistolary Exchange
The Familiar Letter and the Female Botanist, 1760-1820’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11770582 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sam George (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 12-29 |
| Publication date | 2011-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Literature and Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1754-646X • E-ISSN: 1754-646X |
| Publisher | University of Westminster (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.12929/jls.04.1.02 |
| OpenAlex | W2055656264 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 13 |
An investigation into women's involvement with botany in the eighteenth century invariably leads to the culture of letters. The Duchess of Portland (1715-1785) 1 compiled notebooks on natural history, but it is her letters that allow us to uncover social networks and document the circulation of ideas involving botany and plant collecting. The Duchess's ten-year correspondence on botany with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) is significant in illuminating the role of women in botanical culture. At this time, biological specimens were classified according to the taxonomic system of the Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus (1707-78), 2 who himself exchanged letters on classification with a number of British women, notably the plant collector, Anna Blackburne (1726-93) (Wystrach 148-68). Consequently women were soon conversing in a new Linnaean language. It is no coincidence then that the two most widely-read introductions to Linnaean botany at this time were epistolary: Thomas Martyn's Letters on the Elements of Botany Addressed to a Lady (1785), translated from Rousseau, and Priscilla Wakefield's, An Introduction to Botany; in a Series of Familiar Letters (1796). 3 The rendering by Priscilla Wakefield (1751-1832) of Linnaeus in English rather than Latin meant that, for the first time, literate but unlearned young women gained access to botany through letters: Till of late years, [botany] has been confined to the circle of the learned, which may be attributed to those books that treated of it, being principally written in Latin: a difficulty that deterred many, particularly the female sex, from attempting to obtain the knowledge of a science, thus defended, as it were, from their approach
Art · Literature · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Visual Culture and Art Theory
British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800
British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800
A selection of the correspondence of Linnaeus and other naturalists, from the original manuscripts
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Lessons for the Four-Year-Old Botanist
Women, Letters, and the Novel
Linnaeus in Letters and the Cultivation of the Female Mind
Botanical exchanges
The cultivation of the female mind
The Idea of Culture
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |