The Botanic Garden

Erasmus Robert DarwinProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 704K words
Chapters: 71

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Botanic Garden by Erasmus DarwinAuthor: Darwin, Erasmus, 1731-1802,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 1, 2006

Editor's review

The Botanic Garden is a long didactic poem on natural history by Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin), presenting botanical knowledge and natural philosophy in verse and combining scientific enlightenment with literary imagination. The work is in two parts, written in heroic couplets and accompanied by extensive notes, weaving plant classification, reproduction, geology, and cosmology into the lines and reflecting the distinctive fusion of natural history and poetry in late eighteenth-century Britain. This public-domain electronic edition from Project Gutenberg is easy to search and read, and is a primary text for understanding the tradition of scientific poetry and Enlightenment-era British ideas of nature. Its value lies not in modern scientific accuracy but in showing how poetry in that era carried knowledge and imagined nature. Reading requires patience; the notes are dense with information, and the book suits readers willing to slow down and move back and forth between poem and notes.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the history of science and natural history who want to see how eighteenth-century natural knowledge was expressed
Literature specialists studying the relationship between poetry and science around British Romanticism
Advanced readers who enjoy long annotated poems and are willing to read classical English texts slowly
Researchers who need public-domain original texts of scientific poetry for courses or papers

Not a good fit for

Readers who want modern botanical popular science and prioritize accuracy of knowledge
Readers who struggle with English and are unused to eighteenth-century English long verse
Readers who prefer short, light poetry and lack patience for lengthy notes

Reading tips

First read the preface or introduction to understand the book's structure and the themes of its two parts.
Read poem and notes side by side; when encountering botanical terms, look at the notes first and then return to the lines.
There is no need to read straight through; choose relevant passages by theme such as plants, geology, or cosmology.
Read alongside background on eighteenth-century British natural history to understand the era's context of the knowledge system in the poem.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book related to Charles Darwin?

The author, Erasmus Darwin, was Charles Darwin's grandfather and was himself a physician, naturalist, and poet. The Botanic Garden is his work presenting botany and natural philosophy in poetic form; it has no direct content relationship with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, but it reflects the natural research interests of the same family.

Is the botanical knowledge in the book still useful today?

As a modern botany textbook it is outdated; its classification and ideas belong to the late eighteenth-century knowledge system. Its value lies mainly in the history of science and literary history: it shows how people then understood plant reproduction, geological change, and natural order, and how poetry carried scientific content.

Why does this book have so many notes?

Eighteenth-century scientific poetry often used notes to supply knowledge details and citations that the lines could not contain. In the notes Darwin expands botanical explanations, cites literature, and discusses related views, so that poem and notes form a complementary structure. When reading, the notes are not an appendage but an important part of understanding the whole book.

Can I read this ebook if my English is average?

It is quite difficult. The work is a long eighteenth-century English poem in heroic couplets, with long sentences and classical vocabulary and allusions, and the notes are dense with information. Readers with average English can easily lose the thread between lines and notes; it is best to have good English reading ability first, or use an edition with an introduction and annotations.

Comments

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About the author

Erasmus Robert Darwin Author · British · 1731–1802

Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) was an English physician, natural philosopher and poet, and a central figure of the Midlands Enlightenment. Born in Nottinghamshire, he studied at the University of Cambridge and later at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and died in Derbyshire in 1802. His works span medicine, natural history and poetry, with representative titles including the two-volume Zoonomia; or, the Laws of Organic Life, and the long poems The Botanic Garden and The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society. In these works he set out early evolutionary ideas, combining scientific observation with poetic imagination in a style both speculative and literary. He was the grandfather of Charles Darwin, and his ideas had some influence on later evolutionary thought. Five of his works are held in this collection.