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Flora's FieldworkersWomen and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada |
eBook Available
An account of women plant collectors and botanical artists, writers, and teachers whose activities went unrecognized in the historical record.
When Catharine Parr Traill came to Upper Canada in 1832 as a settler from England, she brought along with her ties to British botanical culture. Nonetheless, when she arrived she encountered a new natural landscape and, like other women chronicled in this book, set out to advance the botanical knowledge of the time from the Canadian field.
Flora’s Fieldworkers employs biography, botanical data, herbaria specimens, archival sources, letters, institutional records, book history, and abundant artwork to reconstruct the ways in which women studied and understood plants in the nineteenth century. It features figures ranging from elite women involved in imperial botanical projects in British North America to settler-colonial women in Ontario and Australia - most of whom were scarcely visible in the historical record - who were active in “plant work” as collectors, writers, artists, craft workers, teachers, and organizers. Understood as an appropriate pastime for genteel ladies, botany offered women pathways to scientific education, financial autonomy, and self-expression.
The call for more diverse voices in the present must look to the past as well. Bringing botany to historians and historians to botany, Flora’s Fieldworkers gathers compelling material about women in colonial and imperial Canada and Australia to take a new look at how we came to know what we know about plants.
Flora’s Fieldworkers employs biography, botanical data, herbaria specimens, archival sources, letters, institutional records, book history, and abundant artwork to reconstruct the ways in which women studied and understood plants in the nineteenth century. It features figures ranging from elite women involved in imperial botanical projects in British North America to settler-colonial women in Ontario and Australia - most of whom were scarcely visible in the historical record - who were active in “plant work” as collectors, writers, artists, craft workers, teachers, and organizers. Understood as an appropriate pastime for genteel ladies, botany offered women pathways to scientific education, financial autonomy, and self-expression.
The call for more diverse voices in the present must look to the past as well. Bringing botany to historians and historians to botany, Flora’s Fieldworkers gathers compelling material about women in colonial and imperial Canada and Australia to take a new look at how we came to know what we know about plants.
Details
488 Pages, 6.25 x 9.75
87 photos, 2 tables, colour insert
ISBN 9780228011125
August 2022
Formats: Cloth, eBook
“Refreshingly interdisciplinary, Flora’s Fieldworkers is replete with new information and insights, even on known figures like Dalhousie and Traill. The volume offers innovative perspectives on women’s involvement in botany and plant culture, making strides in the historiography on science in Canada and the fields of women, gender, and science.” Donald L. Opitz, DePaul University
“Flora’s Fieldworkers offers a plumb line into British practices of natural history that brought elite British sojourners and arrivals, settler-women of British background, and women born in Canada into botanical activities. A book about both discovery and re-discovery.” NiCHE Canada
“[Flora’s Fieldworkers] challenges the equation of ‘amateur’ with ‘unskilled’ and ‘insignificant’ and brings women botanists out of the shadows, giving their rigorous investigations the scientific credibility they deserve. This fascinating gathering of academic essays shows women collectors as astute observers and appreciators of plants in the wild.” Literary Review of Canada
“Flora’s Fieldworkers is a richly stimulating collection of studies looking at specific 19th-century Canadian (and Australian) women from a wide variety of situations who were engaged with the plant world in a wide variety of ways, and often under- or even unappreciated. It provides welcome views into Canadian botanical, cultural, and social history.” Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries
“Excitingly interdisciplinary and broadly accessible, this new volume is a significant contribution to the study of gender, identity, and class in early histories of women and science. Flora’s Fieldworkers will be invaluable to future work on women’s botanical study throughout the British colonies and will surely become a model for the kinds of scholarly labor possible through truly interdisciplinary research into the history of women in science.” Isis
“Flora’s Fieldworkers offers a plumb line into British practices of natural history that brought elite British sojourners and arrivals, settler-women of British background, and women born in Canada into botanical activities. A book about both discovery and re-discovery.” NiCHE Canada
“[Flora’s Fieldworkers] challenges the equation of ‘amateur’ with ‘unskilled’ and ‘insignificant’ and brings women botanists out of the shadows, giving their rigorous investigations the scientific credibility they deserve. This fascinating gathering of academic essays shows women collectors as astute observers and appreciators of plants in the wild.” Literary Review of Canada
“Flora’s Fieldworkers is a richly stimulating collection of studies looking at specific 19th-century Canadian (and Australian) women from a wide variety of situations who were engaged with the plant world in a wide variety of ways, and often under- or even unappreciated. It provides welcome views into Canadian botanical, cultural, and social history.” Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries
“Excitingly interdisciplinary and broadly accessible, this new volume is a significant contribution to the study of gender, identity, and class in early histories of women and science. Flora’s Fieldworkers will be invaluable to future work on women’s botanical study throughout the British colonies and will surely become a model for the kinds of scholarly labor possible through truly interdisciplinary research into the history of women in science.” Isis
Ann Shteir is professor emerita and senior scholar in gender, feminist, and women’s studies at York University.
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Women and Plant Practices in Nineteenth-Century Canada beyond “the Usual Records” | 3
Ann Shteir
Part One: Approaching Lady Dalhousie: New Resources, New Perspectives
1 A Botanical Journey of Discovery: Lady Dalhousie in British North America | 37
Deborah Reid
2 Lady Dalhousie’s Orchids and Other Rare Plants in Lower Canada, 1820-1828: Resources for Historical Study | 70
Jacques Cayouette and Faye-Yin Khoo
3 Gender, Botany, and Imperial Networks: Reflections on a Letter | 100
Virginia Vandenberg
Part Two: Collecting and Its Contexts
4 “I dare not say Botanical … Mine is a real love for flowers”: Mary Brenton in 1830s Newfoundland | 133
Ann Shteir
5 Baron Ferdinand von Mueller’s Plant Collectors: At Home with the Australian Flora | 158
Sara Maroske
6 Alice Hollingworth, Early Botanical Explorer in Muskoka District, Ontario | 186
James Pringle
Part Three: Natural History “Old” and “New”
7 Catharine Parr Traill: A Natural Historian in Changing Times | 217
Michael Peterman
8 “Botany … a Prominent Study”: Isabella McIntosh’s Ferns and Natural History in 1860s Montreal | 247
Karen Stanworth
Part Four: Seeing and Making
9 Botanical Albums as Theoretical Objects: Sophie Pemberton and the Logic of Identity | 281
Kristina Huneault
10 Slips and Seeds: Botany and Horticulture in Two Nineteenth-Century Canadian Quilts | 320
Vanessa Nicholas
Part Five: Expanding Public Practices
11 Botanical Gardens in Nineteenth-Century Canada: Individuals and Institutions | 347
David Galbraith
12 Women, Citizen Science, and Botanical Knowledge in Ontario, 1870-1920 | 378
Dawn R. Bazely and Kathryn McPherson
Afterword: Finding Meaning in the Understory | 403
Suzanne Zeller
Tables and Figures | 415
Contributors | 423
Index | 427
Introduction: Women and Plant Practices in Nineteenth-Century Canada beyond “the Usual Records” | 3
Ann Shteir
Part One: Approaching Lady Dalhousie: New Resources, New Perspectives
1 A Botanical Journey of Discovery: Lady Dalhousie in British North America | 37
Deborah Reid
2 Lady Dalhousie’s Orchids and Other Rare Plants in Lower Canada, 1820-1828: Resources for Historical Study | 70
Jacques Cayouette and Faye-Yin Khoo
3 Gender, Botany, and Imperial Networks: Reflections on a Letter | 100
Virginia Vandenberg
Part Two: Collecting and Its Contexts
4 “I dare not say Botanical … Mine is a real love for flowers”: Mary Brenton in 1830s Newfoundland | 133
Ann Shteir
5 Baron Ferdinand von Mueller’s Plant Collectors: At Home with the Australian Flora | 158
Sara Maroske
6 Alice Hollingworth, Early Botanical Explorer in Muskoka District, Ontario | 186
James Pringle
Part Three: Natural History “Old” and “New”
7 Catharine Parr Traill: A Natural Historian in Changing Times | 217
Michael Peterman
8 “Botany … a Prominent Study”: Isabella McIntosh’s Ferns and Natural History in 1860s Montreal | 247
Karen Stanworth
Part Four: Seeing and Making
9 Botanical Albums as Theoretical Objects: Sophie Pemberton and the Logic of Identity | 281
Kristina Huneault
10 Slips and Seeds: Botany and Horticulture in Two Nineteenth-Century Canadian Quilts | 320
Vanessa Nicholas
Part Five: Expanding Public Practices
11 Botanical Gardens in Nineteenth-Century Canada: Individuals and Institutions | 347
David Galbraith
12 Women, Citizen Science, and Botanical Knowledge in Ontario, 1870-1920 | 378
Dawn R. Bazely and Kathryn McPherson
Afterword: Finding Meaning in the Understory | 403
Suzanne Zeller
Tables and Figures | 415
Contributors | 423
Index | 427
