Repository logo
 

From the South Seas to Soho Square: Joseph Bank's Library, Collection and Kingdom of Natural History

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Abstract

The library and herbarium of Joseph Banks was one of the most prominent natural history collections of late eighteenth-century Britain. The examination of the working practices used in Banks’s library, which was based at 32 Soho Square from 1777, reveals the activities of the numerous individuals who worked for Banks and on his collections from the early 1770s until 1820. Banks’s librarians and their assistants used a range of different paper technologies to classify and catalogue the vast numbers of new botanical species being discovered at this time. These practices of managing information changed as the decades progressed, reflecting the changes to systems of classification and the different research projects of Banks and his natural historical staff. Banks’s great wealth and powerful position as President of the Royal Society gave him the means to build and use this rigorously organised collection and library to influence a range of other private and institutional collections for almost fifty years.

Description

Keywords

Journal Title

Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0035-9149

Volume Title

Publisher

The Royal Society

Publisher DOI

Publisher URL

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
AHRC, award number AH/L503897/1