Charles Waterton, 1782-1865

During his lifetime Charles Waterton was famous for his eccentricities, but also for his achievements and his opinions. A Yorkshire landowner, he was a notable Victorian figure who turned his park into an animal and bird sanctuary. He was an explorer of tropical rain forests in South America and became an authority on the poisons used by the South American Indians. He was also a taxidermist and published many books, numbering Darwin, Dickens and Roosevelt among his readers. Above all, he was a conservationist who fought to protect nature against the destruction and pollution of Victorian industrialization. The author draws on his surviving papers and seeks to counter the distorted view of him as a mere eccentric. Instead she seeks to reinstate him as the first conservationist of the modern age.