Empire's Nature

Completed in 1747 Mark Catesby’s <i>Natural History of Carolina Florida and the Bahama Islands</i> was the first major illustrated publication on the flora and fauna of Britain’s American colonies. Together with his <i>Hortus Britanno-Americanus</i> (1763) which detailed plant species that might be transplanted successfully to British soil Catesby’s <i>Natural History</i> exerted an important though often overlooked influence on the development of art natural history and scientific observation in the eighteenth century.<br/>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.<br/>The contributors are David R. Brigham Joyce E. Chaplin Mark Laird Amy R. W. Meyers Therese O'Malley and Margaret Beck Pritchard.