| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 206 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Botanizing -- Information networks in the botanical community -- Botanizing and self-improvement -- Children, education, and American botany -- Gender and botany -- Botanizing and the invention of leisure -- Natural theology and amateur botany -- Botany and the rhetoric of utility -- The triumph of professionalization -- The nature-study movement : the legacy amateur botany |
| Summary |
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 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-195) and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Botanizers -- United States -- History -- 19th century
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Botany -- United States -- History -- 19th century
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SCIENCE -- Life Sciences -- Botany.
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Botanizers
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Botany
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United States
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
92005022 |
| ISBN |
0585029075 |
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9780585029078 |
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0807862398 |
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9780807862391 |
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