This exhibition, featuring materials from the Fisher's Victorian natural history collection. showcases both the collecting and manuscript practices of naturalists and how books - in some instances, encased the specimens themselves.
Fern-fever, orchidelirium, the seaweed craze: for Victorians, natural history was a pleasurable pursuit sometimes bordering on a psychological disorder. At more than a thousand volumes, the Fisher Library's Victorian natural history collection provides a unique opportunity to trace the ways in which the medium of print stimulated and sustained the nineteenth-century appetite for natural history. This exhibition showcases both the collecting and manuscript practices of naturalists and how books, in some instances, encased the specimens themselves. A special focus here is women practitioners of natural history -- as authors of and contributors to published works, and as artists and collectors. On display will be copies of some of the most popular natural history works of the day: J.G. Wood's Common Objects of the Country - and some of the most beautiful and rare: James Bateman's Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala. Weighing more than 38 lbs, Bateman's work is considered the largest book published with lithographic plates.
Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm
Sat & Sun CLOSED
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
120 St. George Street
Toronto, ON, CANADA
43.6640736, -79.3989838
Nature on the Page: The Print and Manuscript Culture of Victorian Natural History