USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

William Bartram, the search for nature's design: Selected art, letters, and unpublished writings.

SelectedWorks Author Profiles:

Thomas Hallock

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2010

Abstract

An important figure in early American science and letters, William Bartram (1739–1823) has been known almost exclusively for his classic book, Travels. William Bartram, The Search for Nature’s Design presents new material in the form of art, letters, and unpublished manuscripts. These documents expand our knowledge of Bartram as an explorer, naturalist, artist, writer, and citizen of the early Republic. Part One, the correspondence, includes letters to and from Bartram’s family, friends, and peers, establishing his developing consciousness about the natural world as well as his passion for rendering it in drawing. The difficult business of undertaking scientific study and commercial botany in the eighteenth century comes alive through letters that detail travel arrangements, enduring hardship, and mentoring. Commonly regarded as a recluse or eccentric, Bartram instead emerges as deeply engaged with the major ideas, issues, and intellectual life of his time. Part Two presents selections from Bartram’s diverse but little-known unpublished writings. Leading scholars in their field introduce manuscripts such as a draft for Travels, garden diaries faithfully kept, an antislavery treatise scrawled on the back of a plant catalog, a commonplace book, pharmacopia compiled for his brothers, and exacting accounts of Native American culture. Each selection reveals another dimension of Bartram’s unending interest in the world he encountered at home and traveling the southern colonies.

Comments

Includes 608 pages, color illustrations, map. For full access, check out the book through the USF St. Petersburg Library, request it on interlibrary loan, or order it through a book dealer.

Language

en_US

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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