Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Daybooks of Discovery: Nature Diaries in Britain, 1770-1870

by Mary Ellen Bellanca
Save 17% Save 17%
Current price ₹3,410.00
Original price ₹4,092.00
Original price ₹4,092.00
Original price ₹4,092.00
(-17%)
₹3,410.00
Current price ₹3,410.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9780813926131
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: University of Virginia Press
  • Publisher Imprint: University of Virginia Press
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 248
  • Original Price: USD 29.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 395 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Rooted in a thriving culture of amateur natural history, the keeping of nature journals and diaries flourished in late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century Britain. As prescientific worldviews ceded to a more materialist outlook informed by an explosion of factual knowledge, lovers of nature both famous and obscure began to use daily composition as a quest for information about and a celebration of their surroundings. A central site of encounter, discovery, and expression, nature diaries took part in a vigorous cultural dialogue, performing, in an era called the "golden age" of nature writing, an engaging alchemy of language, science, and art.

In Daybooks of Discovery: Nature Diaries in Britain, 1770-1870, Mary Ellen Bellanca offers the first critical study of this genre. In looking at the diaries of Gilbert White, Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Shore, George Eliot, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, as well as those of lesser-known figures, she explores the writers' pursuit of empirical knowledge of nature for its own sake, rather than focusing on Romantic nature philosophy or on 'ecology' as a metaphor for spiritual connectedness. Each chapter situates an individual author's journals amid contemporary discourses of natural history, examining how journal writing enabled and mediated the diarist's practice as naturalist.

A mélange of fact, narrative, and imaginative re-creation, the nature diary played a crucial role in literature and science in a period of burgeoning knowledge about the natural world. For students and scholars of environmental history, the history of science, ecocriticism, and Victorian studies, Daybooks of Discovery will prove an essential tool for understanding this distinct genre.

Mary Ellen Bellanca is Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us