Botany sexuality and women's writing 1760-1830

<p>In this fascinating study Samantha George explores the cultivation of the female mind and the feminised discourse of botanical literature in eighteenth-century Britain. In particular she discusses British women's engagement with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus and his unsettling discovery of plant sexuality.<br><br>Previously ignored primary texts of an extraordinary nature are rescued from obscurity and assigned a proper place in the histories of science eighteenth-century literature and women's writing. The result is groundbreaking: the author explores nationality and sexuality debates in relation to botany and charts the appearance of a new literary stereotype the sexually precocious female botanist. She uncovers an anonymous poem on Linnaean botany handwritten in the eighteenth century and subsequently traces the development of a new genre of women's writing - the botanical poem with scientific notes.<br><br>The book is indispensable reading for all scholars of the eighteenth century especially those interested in Romantic women's writing or the relationship between literature and science.</p>