Botany, sexuality and women's writing, 1760–1830

From modest shoot to forward plant

Sam George

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780719088452
  9780719076978
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526130174
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this fascinating study, Samantha George explores the cultivation of the female mind and the feminised discourse of botanical literature in eighteenth-century Britain. In particular, she discusses British women's engagement with the Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, and his unsettling discovery of plant sexuality.

Previously ignored primary texts of an extraordinary nature are rescued from obscurity and assigned a proper place in the histories of science, eighteenth-century literature, and women's writing. The result is groundbreaking: the author explores nationality and sexuality debates in relation to botany and charts the appearance of a new literary stereotype, the sexually precocious female botanist. She uncovers an anonymous poem on Linnaean botany, handwritten in the eighteenth century, and subsequently traces the development of a new genre of women's writing — the botanical poem with scientific notes.

The book is indispensable reading for all scholars of the eighteenth century, especially those interested in Romantic women's writing, or the relationship between literature and science.

Table of contents

• Botany, sexuality and women’s writing 1760–1830: From modest shoot to forward plant
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘The sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man’: floral femininity and female education
• 2 ‘Unveiling the mysteries of vegetation’: botany and the feminine
• 3 Sex, class and order in Flora’s army
• 4 Forward plants and wanton women: botany and sexual anxiety in the late eighteenth century
• 5 ‘Botany in an English dress’: British flora and the ‘fair daughters of Albion’
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Key of the Sexual System
• Appendix 2: Botanical poems by women
• Bibliography
• Index