Article ID: CBB303861168

‘What he hath gather'd together shall not be lost’: remembering James Petiver (2020)

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James Petiver FRS (ca 1663–1718) was a professional apothecary and prominent natural historian in London at the turn of the eighteenth century. This essay introduces a special issue of Notes and Records, ‘Remembering James Petiver’, marking the 300th anniversary of his death. Combining his known biography with new research, it accounts for Petiver's formation as urban apothecary and botanist, his emergence as public natural historian in the mid 1690s, and his subsequent career as natural history collector and author. Petiver's museum of plants and invertebrates was accumulated by co-ordinating an unprecedented network of relatively ordinary people, many of them medical practitioners, to collect for him wherever they travelled: North and South America, western and southern Africa, mainland Europe, South and East Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines. This network and its achievements were predicated upon Britain's expanding global commercial and colonial interests (including those that exploited the traffic in and labour of enslaved human beings). It also depended upon Petiver's strategic management of his collaborators, through the exchange of correspondence and material objects. New analysis of Petiver's network, specimens, publications and manuscripts revises the prevailing view that he was careless and disorganized, to reveal a socially industrious and intellectually discriminating natural scientist.

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Description An introduction to a special issue of Notes and Records titled "‘What he hath gather'd together shall not be lost’: remembering James Petiver".


Reviewed By

Review E. Geoffrey Hancock (2021) Review of "‘What he hath gather'd together shall not be lost’: remembering James Petiver". Archives of Natural History (pp. 190-191). unapi

Includes Series Articles

Article Charles E. Jarvis (2020) James Petiver (c. 1663–1718): A Concise Bibliography. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 329-333). unapi

Article Charles E. Jarvis (2020) ‘The Most Common Grass, Rush, Moss, Fern, Thistles, Thorns or Vilest Weeds You Can Find’: James Petiver's Plants. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 303-328). unapi

Article Richard I. Vane-Wright (2020) James Petiver's 1717 Papilionum Britanniae: An Analysis of the First Comprehensive Account of British Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea). Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 275-302). unapi

Article Kathleen Susan Murphy (2020) James Petiver's ‘Kind Friends’ and ‘Curious Persons’ in the Atlantic World: Commerce, Colonialism and Collecting. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 259-274). unapi

Article Alice Marples (2020) James Petiver's ‘Joynt-Stock’: Middling Agency in Urban Collecting Networks. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 239-258). unapi

Article Katrina Elizabeth Maydom (2020) James Petiver's Apothecary Practice and the Consumption of American Drugs in Early Modern London. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 213-238). unapi

Article Charles E. Jarvis; Richard Coulton (2020) A Chronology of the Life of James Petiver (ca 1663–1718). Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 183-187). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB303861168/

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Authors & Contributors
Ibáñez, Neus
Camarasa, Josep Maria
Kinukawa, Tomomi
Vane-Wright, Richard I.
Karl Schulze-Hagen
Marples, Alice
Concepts
Natural history
Apothecaries
Correspondence and corresponding
Botany
Collectors and collecting
Specimen exchange
Time Periods
17th century
18th century
Early modern
19th century
16th century
Places
London (England)
Great Britain
England
Netherlands
Spain
Germany
Institutions
Institut Botànic de Barcelona
Royal Society of London
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
Chelsea Physic Garden
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