The Lord Treasurer of Botany: Sir James Edward Smith and the Linnean Collections. Edited by Helen Cowdy. 2016. illus. (some col.). 388 p. gr8vo. Hardcover.

The Lord Treasurer of Botany: Sir James Edward Smith and the Linnaean Collections chronicles the life of Smith, the shy, diffident son of a Norwich textile merchant, who took a passion for botany and forged it into a highly successful career in natural history in 1790s London. Archivist Tom Kennett looks closely at Smiths years of study and his travels around Europe just before the French Revolution.

We are led through Smiths purchase of the collections of Carl Linnaeus and follow his rise to fame as an instructor of botanical study not least to Queen Charlotte and her daughters at Windsor in the process becoming a focal point for the study of botany and natural history in Great Britain, Europe and beyond.