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© 2008 Stephanie Volmer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2008 Stephanie Volmer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PLANTING A NEW WORLD: LETTERS AND LANGUAGES OF TRANSATLANTIC BOTANICAL EXCHANGE, 1733-1777 By STEPHANIE VOLMER A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Literatures in English written under the direction of Myra Jehlen and approved by ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2008 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Planting a New World: Letters and Languages of Transatlantic Botanical Exchange, 1733-1777 by STEPHANIE VOLMER Dissertation Director: Myra Jehlen My dissertation describes an important change in the accepted understanding and imagination of nature. This change took place over the course of the eighteenth century, when nature, from being conceived of as a settled state subject to cyclical change, came to be seen as mobile and mutable. The sense of a mobile, mutable nature--the dissertation's central trope--arose from the experience of travel and discovery, which was accompanied from the first by a vigorous process of transplantation. Plants and seeds were carried across oceans, having been dug up on one continent to be replanted often in another. From being static and predictable, plant life therefore became, for scholars and poets alike, dynamic, mutable, and adaptable. I focus on the writings of a small group of men in the Anglo-American world, including John and William Bartram, Peter Collinson, Alexander Garden, John Ellis, and Carl Linnaeus, who were engaged in the work of transporting, planting, writing about, and classifying botanical objects. All were men of science (by inclination if not profession) and men of letters, and it is in their actual letters--their epistolary exchanges-- that the transformation emerges most clearly. Indeed, letters nurtured the rhetorical and ii conceptual work of natural history in the Enlightenment, and thus provide the clearest expression and reflection of the cultural changes in the idea of nature itself. The mobility of botanical objects opened up new imaginative, rhetorical, organizational, and material possibilities for the individuals I discuss in this dissertation. Through their letters and related natural history writings, I trace the paradox by which nature came to be seen as the embodiment of change, even as it was being categorized and classified in new ways. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is no exaggeration to say that I would not have completed this dissertation without the guidance of Myra Jehlen, whose sustained interested in the project propelled me from one draft to the next. My debt to her is both intellectual and personal. Thanks are due, too, to my committee--Ann Fabian, Richard Miller, and Michael Warner--for reading, commenting, and pushing me to imagine a life for this project beyond the dissertation. I owe a great deal to Richard Poirier, for teaching me to aspire to a new way of reading and writing, and for opening new doors. His faith and encouragement have been indispensable. Jackson Lears and Donna Kornacki Green at Raritan also offered unfailing support and flexibility as I worked toward completion, for which I am grateful. A Daniel Francis Howard Travel Fellowship pushed my project toward completion, and I thank Barbara Howard and the Rutgers English Department for the award. The challenges and rewards of being a student in the Rutgers English Department have been many, but I want to acknowledge specifically the pleasures of working with the Americanist Reading Group, the Transatlantic Eighteenth-Century Studies Group, and the Dissertation Reading Group hosted at the Raritan office. I benefited greatly from the expertise and generosity of the librarians and staff at the following institutions: the American Philosophical Society (especially Roy E. Goodman and Valerie-Anne Lutz); the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; and the Linnean Society of London (especially Gina Douglas, Lynda Brooks, and Janet Ashdown). Thanks, too, to Emma Tate, Curator of the Derby Collections at Knowsley iv Hall, and to Clem Fisher, Curator of Birds and Mammals at World Museum Liverpool, for their assistance and hospitality. My friends have offered intellectual companionship, emotional sustenance, and frequent conviviality, and I am fortunate to count among them: Melanie Andrich, Dario Arena, Jen Dussling Arena, Matthew Budman, Lauren Butcher, Ann Dean, Sonia DiLoreto, Kara Donaldson, Kate Elias, Bernardo Feliciano, Moira Fitzgibbons, Jim Gibbons, Jason Gieger, Joe Groshong, Allen Grove, Tom Hallock, Nancy Hoffman, Barbara Holler, Josh Jacobs, Ken Jung, Dave Kobylinski, Nettie Lagace, Martha Lagace, Dan Malachuk, Lisa Melhado, Matthew Parr, Mike Petronio, Jason Salter, Matthew Shifman, Chuck Sindelar, Margot Sklar, Jay Stevenson, Nathalie Strassheim, David Toise, Julie Traxler, Cora Turlish, Noralee Walker, and Takashi Yokoyama. Special thanks to Cristina Beltran, for the cosmic link, and to Rob Nelson, for keeping faith. The steadfast support of my immediate family buoyed me throughout, and I thank them for their patience and confidence: Kathleen and Bob Malaney, Bill and Rita Volmer, Anne Volmer, Susan Volmer, Josh Carpenter, David Pattullo, Abigail and Lelia Volmer, and Victor Tulli Sr. Finally, I am grateful to Vic Tulli, for helping to ensure an enviable quality of life during the long years of graduate school, for asking the hard questions at just the right time in the writing process, and for seeing me through from beginning to end. I dedicate this work to Abraham Kaplan, Cheryl Tulli, and Stephanie P. Volmer. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page i Abstract of the Dissertation ii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents vi Introduction 1 Chapter One 22 Of Ships & Seeds & Pirates & Plants: An Introduction to the Mobility of Nature Chapter Two 64 "The Seeds of This I am a Stranger to": John Bartram, Peter Collinson, and the Cedars Chapter Three 113 Alexander Garden, John Ellis, and the Dynamism of Epistolary Natural History Chapter Four 164 John Ellis, Carl Linnaeus, and a Botanical History of the Gardenia Chapter Five 221 "Soil & Situation": William Bartram and the Rootedness of Nature Epilogue 255 Appendix of Illustrations 260 Curriculum Vitae 270 vi 1 Introduction We know that Nature has disseminated her Bounties variously through the habitable World so that some species of fruits and herbs arise spontaneously in one country and others in another but that most of them are capable of being transplanted and will thrive in the most Distant Regions. It is the business of the Philosopher and Naturalist to explore these treasures of Nature and spread the knowledge and use of them for the benefit of mankind. -- Peter Templeman (Secretary of the Society for the Encouragement of Art, Manufactures & Commerce) to John Bartram, September 16, 17601 There are numerous delights in doing archival research, including the unexpected discovery, the fortuitous connection, the lucky break. This dissertation is a result of my own experience with unexpected discoveries and lucky breaks in the course of research and writing, as well as a study of the unexpected discoveries, fortuitous connections, and delights experienced by the men I discuss in the following pages. All of the individuals I talk about were engaged in the project of transatlantic botanical exchange in the eighteenth century: John and William Bartram in Philadelphia; Peter Collinson, John Ellis, and John Fothergill in London; Alexander Garden in Charleston; Carl Linnaeus in Uppsala. In pursuit of some understanding of the relation between their work with mobile plants and their forms of expression, I found myself digging into archives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I had become acquainted with these figures through their epistolary exchanges, some of which had been published. After reading their letters, I wanted to get a deeper sense of the linguistic and conceptual frameworks they used in their natural history endeavors. I wanted to learn how they responded to natural objects, formulated ideas, and, in a sense, spoke to themselves about the natural history work they were conducting. I wanted to explore the textual ground of transatlantic botanical exchange in this transitional period in the history of natural history. My research uncovered some 2 important documents for primary study--for example, draft letters for which the original is no longer extant, and detailed journal-like writing--and provided useful biographical and historical information that deepened my understanding of the eighteenth-century project of exploring and classifying the natural world. Still, it was the unexpected discoveries during my research that capture the spirit and in some ways define the scope of my project. Let me provide a few examples. * * * The archives at the Linnean Society of London are rich with materials on the subject of natural history generally and botany specifically. The Society was founded in 1788 after Sir James Edward Smith (1759-1828), the first president, successfully negotiated the purchase of Carl Linnaeus's entire manuscript and specimen collection. The Linnaeus materials formed the foundational collection of the Society, whose holdings have grown immensely. I made a visit in the summer of 2005 in order to examine the papers of Peter Collinson (1694-1768) and John Ellis (1710?-1776). Both Collinson and Ellis were
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