From the South Seas to Soho Square: Joseph Banks's Library, collection and Kingdom of natural history

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 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 history staff. Banks's great wealth and powerful position as President of the Royal Society gave him the means to build and use this rigorously organized collection and library to influence a range of other private and institutional collections for almost 50 years.On 12 July 1771, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander disembarked from the ship Endeavour in the English port of Deal, having returned from James Cook's first voyage to the South Seas. The specimens and documents they compiled and collected, which related to hundreds of species of plants previously unknown to European natural history, formed the foundation of Banks's herbarium and library, which remained one of the largest and most prominent until Banks's death in 1820. The main aim of this article is to survey the approaches used over a 49-year period to manage this vast quantity of information, which continued to increase in size as Banks received specimens, descriptions and publications from correspondents around the globe. Over this time, the various subsections of the collection developed alongside changes in systems of classification and revisions initiated by Banks and the 11 different librarians and assistants he employed.

Empire and the Theology of Nature in the Cambridge Botanic Garden, 1760–1825

“…137 By the early nineteenth century, Willdenow's Species plantarum had become central to the process of communicating botanical knowledge between British botanical collections, connecting the Cambridge Botanic Garden with institutions such as Kew Gardens and the private collections administered by Banks. 138 The production and annotation of catalogues embody the practices developed to cope with the continual accession of new species. The interleaved catalogues gathered of his articles than I am."…”

Jack's Appendix: When did it come out?

“…While these are individuals rather than scientific institutions, the two copies sent to India were soon physically in institutions (the Calcutta Botanic Garden of the EIC and the Asiatic Society of Bengal). Robert Brown's employer, Sir Joseph Banks, died in 1820, bequeathing his library to Brown's care before eventual transfer to the British Museum (Rose, 2019). The Banksian Library was generally open to visiting scientists (Stafleu, 1968), so again this falls within the ambit of effective publication.…”