Empire's Nature: Mark Catesby's New World Vision (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture) [Hardcover]

Amy R. W. Meyers (Author)

Book Description

Series: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture | Publication Date: February 24, 1999

Completed in 1747, Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands was the first major illustrated publication on the flora and fauna of Britain's American colonies. Together with his Hortus Britanno-Americanus (1763), which detailed plant species that might be transplanted successfully to British soil, Catesby's Natural History exerted an important, though often overlooked, influence on the development of art, natural history, and scientific observation in the eighteenth century.

Inspired by a major traveling exhibition of Catesby's watercolor drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, this collection of interdisciplinary essays considers Catesby's endeavors as a naturalist-artist, scientific explorer, experimental horticulturist, ornamental gardener, and early environmental thinker in terms of the interests held by the various, overlapping communities in which he functioned—particularly as those interests related to the British colonial enterprise.

The contributors are David R. Brigham, Joyce E. Chaplin, Mark Laird, Amy R. W. Meyers, Therese O'Malley, and Margaret Beck Pritchard.

The contributors:
David R. Brigham (Worcester Art Museum)
Joyce E. Chaplin (Vanderbilt University)
Mark Laird (University of Toronto)
Amy R. W. Meyers (Huntington Library & Art Collections)
Therese O'Malley (National Gallery of Art)
Margaret Beck Pritchard (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book will find an important place in any library.

William and Mary Quarterly

A useful addition to libraries of readers with a particular interest in the history of colonial or eighteenth-century British science or art.

Journal of Southern History

A handsomely illustrated collection of essays .

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

A thoughtful and sometimes provocative reexamination of Mark Catesby•s roles in British natural history during the early eighteenth century.

North Carolina Historical Review

A wonderful book, a meticulous tracing of Catesby's sumptuous welding of botany and zoology into eighteenth-century natural history.

John R. Stilgoe, Harvard University

From the Inside Flap

Original essays examine the broad influence of Mark Catesby—England•s explorer artist—on the devlopment of natural history, art, and scientific observation in the 18th-century.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (February 24, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807824593
• ISBN-13: 978-0807824597
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,528,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)