Loving Insects
John Abbot's Drawings and Natural History Collecting in the Atlantic World, 1760s-1840s
Will be published approx. on 15. July 2026
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-8203-7357-7 (ISBN)
Description
John Abbot's love of insects manifested itself in his exquisite watercolor drawings of butterflies, moths, beetles, cicadas, dragonflies, wasps, and spiders. Considered one of the finest illustrated entomological publications of its era, The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia combined those watercolors with Abbot's terse notes that described his encounters with these creatures. Born in London in 1751, Abbot journeyed to the American South in 1773 to collect and draw insects and birds for natural history collectors in Britain. Although he had had ambitions as a young man to join the ranks of London's natural history illustrators, he never returned to Britain. Instead, Abbot lived most of his long life in Georgia, where he made thousands of watercolor drawings of insects and supplied thousands of insect specimens to his British, European, and American clients. Despite his accomplishments as a naturalist and an artist, he is little known today. Loving Insects aims to rectify this omission by detailing Abbot's activities as a natural history artist, a specimen hunter, and a naturalist and by claiming a space for him as a major figure in the story of early American natural history.
Reviews / Votes
Tobin's book on the remarkable artist, naturalist, and insect lover John Abbot is a gift for scholars and general readers interested in collecting and eighteenth-century natural history. -- Deirdre Coleman * author of Henry Smeathman, the Flycatcher * Tobin literally dusts the cobwebs off Abbot to reveal a world of scientific curiosity and inquiry that we are more accustomed to stumbling upon in one of Attenborough's documentary films than in eighteenth-century books, manuscripts, and specimens sequestered in museum and library cabinets. As such, Loving Insects serves as a vivid reminder that science storytelling is not a contemporary phenomenon, nor is scientific exploration. Abbot represents all that has contributed to the shaping of modern science in an increasingly globalized world. -- Romita Ray * author of Under the Banyan Tree: Relocating the Picturesque in British India * Compellingly written and stunningly illustrated, Beth Fowkes Tobin's study of the unforgivingly forgotten Georgia-based natural history collector and artist John Abbot is a tour de force-exacting, vibrant, and deeply personal. We have never needed natural history more than now as we face a terrifying future. This book helps you understand why. -- Jordan Goodman * author of Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors: An Adventurous History of Botany *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
University of Georgia Press
Product notice
With dust jacket
Illustrations
91 color images; 1 historical map
Dimensions
Height: 279 mm
Width: 203 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8203-7357-7 (9780820373577)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
BETH FOWKES TOBIN is professor emerita of English and women's studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author and/or editor of several books, including The Duchess's Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook's Voyages and two award-winning books, Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting and Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1830. She lives and writes in Chicago.