Reading the World

British Practices of Natural History, 1760-1820

Edwin David Rose

$185

Hardback

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English

University of Pittsburgh Press
01 June 2025

History of science; Biology, life sciences; The Earth: natural history general

How Natural History Connected Diverse Individuals and Information Across the Globe.

The last decades of the eighteenth-century witnessed attempts to structure nature with educated landowners dominating the development of the sciences. Many utilized networks of global trade and empire to inventory nature and understand events across the world. Specimens ranging from a North-Welsh bittern to the plants of Botany Bay were collected, recorded and classified. Texts were produced, distributed and used across the globe. Reading the World locates books, natural history specimens and people in a close cycle of literary production to reveal new aspects of scientific practice in the eighteenth-century. Rose uncovers the complex material connections between books, specimens and manuscripts that came to dominate practices of natural history across the British Empire in a period often seen to mark the emergence of a global modernity.

AUTHOR: Dr. Edwin Rose is currently an AHRC Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and an Advanced Research Fellow at Darwin College Cambridge.

62 b/w illustrations, 10 colour plates

By: Edwin David Rose
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780822948513
ISBN 10: 0822948516
Pages: 408
Publication Date: 01 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified

Edwin D. Rose is currently AHRC Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Advanced Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. From May 2025 he will be a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellow in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds.

Reviews for Reading the World: British Practices of Natural History, 1760-1820

Reading the World is a richly detailed exploration of the interplay between natural history and book culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rose reveals how 'paper technologies'--from collection slips to natural history books--transformed amassing, classifying, and the global knowledge networks throughout the British Empire. This groundbreaking work masterfully offers us a new perspective of how print culture and innovative collecting practices reshaped scientific authority and knowledge production in the making of the modern world.--Gordon McOuat, University of King's College