'Lost' book of exquisite scientific drawings rediscovered

April 30, 2019 5:40 AM

'Decades of searching uncovered the brilliantly illustrated plants and detailed notes made by a U.S. woman living in Cuba in the 1800s.' writes Czerne Reid at National Geographic. We can now see A. K. Wollstonecraft's Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba (1826?) on-line in full. Via reddit.

Wollstonecraft (sister-in-law of Mary) also wrote an essay on The Natural Rights of Women for Boston Monthly Magazine in 1825.

posted by misteraitch (9 comments total)

OMG, fwiw.
posted by y2karl at 7:13 AM on April 30, 2019

Thank you for sharing. I so appreciate this work. It seems done for herself, with care and intellectual rigor. To be able to see this almost 200 year old work is amazing. As we see more of these works come to public view we fully understand the patriarchal forces that kept these works away from the world.
posted by zerobyproxy at 7:26 AM on April 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

Great find and wonderful illustrations. I downloaded all three volumes. Wollstonecroft's tiny crabbed handwriting is a chore to decipher, but once I've looked at all of the illustrations I'll make my way through it. What a window into the tropical past!
posted by Agave at 8:10 AM on April 30, 2019

Famed Cuban Pollinator: Bee Hummingbird."- smallest bird in the world.
posted by y2karl at 8:26 AM on April 30, 2019 [1 favorite]

Rad.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:28 AM on April 30, 2019

This is amaaaaaaaazing. I want to read all of the undersung 17th and 18th century female naturalists.
posted by desuetude at 1:11 PM on April 30, 2019 [2 favorites]

Love these sorts of things.
posted by zenon at 1:17 PM on April 30, 2019

As we see more of these works come to public view we fully understand the patriarchal forces that kept these works away from the world.

That's particularly noticeable because, as I was reading this post, I started wondering "any relation to the famous Wollstonecraft, or the other famous-but-not-by-that-name Wollstonecraft?" until I got to the part where, yes. They were apparently a family full of brains and I can't help but think they'd collectively be more famous for that in itself if so many of them hadn't been women.
posted by traveler_ at 5:15 PM on April 30, 2019 [3 favorites]

Super inside baseball: it's fascinating to read how Judith Russell went up to Cornell with the collector. I'm picturing that phone call with some interest--and of course it's particularly delicious that it would have been two long-standing ARL deans who already knew each other but who were having to navigate some professionally tricky territory where one had the donor and the other had the thing the donor wants.

I'm also utterly unsurprised that first, Cueto thought of Russell as a potential ally and second, that she decided to go along to Cornell.

Finally, hello Worldcat fail (Cueto couldn't find a location listed in the record he found which is what prompted the call to Russell) and here I'm assuming he was looking in WorldCat and not ArchivesSpace or whatever.
posted by librarylis at 6:03 PM on April 30, 2019