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Author : Elizabeth B. Keeney Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press Page : 164 pages File Size : 45,81 MB Release : 2000-11-09 Category : History ISBN : 0807862398
Keeney examines the role of botany in the lives of nineteenth-century 'botanizers,' amateur scientists who collected, identified, and preserved plant specimens as a pastime. Using popular magazines, fiction, and autobiographies of the day, she explores the popular culture of this avocation, which attracted both men and women by the thousands.
After rising to fashion during the 1820s, botany rapidly became the most popular science in America for recreational and pedagogical purposes, and it remained tremendously popular throughout the century. Tens of thousands of enthusiasts, calling themselves "botanizers," embraced the pastime by collecting, identifying, and preserving specimens. Elizabeth Keeney examines the role of botany in the lives of these amateur scientists and establishes the role that they in turn played in the botanical community. Using popular magazines, textbooks, letters, diaries, fiction, and autobiographies of the day, The Botanizers explores the popular culture of this avocation, which attracted both men and women. According to Keeney, amateur botanizers and trained professionals managed to maintain a spirit of cooperation and collegiality throughout most of the century. Amateurs were usually less interested in contributing to science than they were in self-improvement, religious expression, and other aspects of botanizing that were of little importance to professionals. As botany became increasingly professionalized, the goals of professionals and amateurs diverged even further, and by late century, the botanizers had rejected the new biological focus because it ignored their motivations for botanizing.