Tag Archives: natural history
A Romantic Natural History Timeline: 1750-1859
1750: Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; Johann Tobias Mayer, Map of the Moon 1751: Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica 1752: Thomas Chatterton b. (d.1770); Benjamin Franklin invents lightning conductor 1753: Linnaeus, Species Plantorum; charter granted to British Museum 1755: … Continue reading
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Tagged natural history, poetry, prose, Romanticism, science
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Additional Topics in Romantic Natural History
Amphibious Thinking The Anxiety of Species: Toward a Romantic Natural History Defining “Life”and “Death” Global Exploration and New Forms of Nature Erasmus Darwin and the Frankenstein Mistake Extinction as Metaphor The Frog-Fish of Surinam Geologist-Poets and Poet-Geologists Human “Monsters” and … Continue reading
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Tagged animals, literature, natural history, plants, science
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The Anxiety of Species: Toward a Romantic Natural History
[first published in The Wordsworth Circle 28:3 (1997): 130-36] We sometimes think that the concept of mutable species burst on the world like a thunderclap with the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. So great was Darwin’s own … Continue reading
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Tagged Blake, Charles Darwin, ecology, Erasmus Darwin, natural history, poetry, Romanticism, Shelley
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Why a “Romantic” Natural History?
“Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the Grave, that are not as they were” (Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Alastor”, 1816: ll. 719-20) We often assume that Charles Darwin announced a new era in the scientific understanding of … Continue reading
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Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau’s Walden is the ur-text of American nature writing. Many earlier American explorers, naturalists, and authors had described the natural wonders of the new continent, but until Thoreau, no author had located “nature” at the center of one vision of … Continue reading
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Tagged America, natural history, nature writing, prose
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John Clare
John Clare (1793-1864) is often considered to be the quintessential nature poet of the Romantic era. He was acclaimed as a “nature poet” from the time his first volume, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, appeared in 1820. Unlike Robert … Continue reading
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Tagged animals, natural history, plants, poetry
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