About

Lovell Reeve & Co. was the leading natural history publisher of the mid-Victorian era, responsible for a diverse range of publications in the field, including Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, the Floral Magazine, and Stereoscopic Magazine. This project is a detailed study of the newly processed Lovell Reeve & Co. archives at RBG Kew. Lovell Reeve’s publications are the result of a complex system of labour and market dynamics, working with illustrators, writers, and scientists to produce volumes that were then consumed by both specialists and lay audiences. This project will shed new light on science publishing as an economic and cultural system, focusing on its participation in the global trade in natural history specimens, opportunities for social mobility across gender and class lines, and the way that publishers responded to market demands.

Intellectually, the project draws inspiration from the Plant Humanities, using a unique archive to explore human-plant relations through questions of economy, labour, culture, and technology. The project engages with research in four principal academic areas: (1) the history of science publishing, moving the focus from canonical authors and singular texts to an investigation of the material conditions and changing readerships for natural history texts; (2) the history of the global trade in natural history specimens and its links to science publishing networks; (3) research on the social and economic significance of serial publication, in multi-part book series as well as periodicals; (4) research on the history of botanical illustrations, especially what can be deduced of the ‘hidden histories’ of working-class designers and women artists and their agency in the making of botanical knowledge. The project as a whole seeks to make an important original contribution to the field of Plant Humanities, our understanding of the history of science, and the history of natural history and botanical publishing practices.