Abstract
Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne (1789) has inspired botanists and birdwatchers for more than two centuries as well as readers more attuned to its vivid descriptive language and ability to intensely evoke its location. This chapter proceeds from the often-made but rarely developed observation that much of White’s success can be attributed to his skill as a literary writer as much as to his ability as a natural historian which, while seemingly self-evident, has apparently never been established through close reading. It explores White’s literary credentials by textual analysis as well as by investigating his literary context and influences. Focusing on White’s descriptions of birds and bird behaviour, it shows that throughout his work White displayed a practised and nuanced use of language clearly informed by an interest in rhetoric and poetics as well as natural history. This literary ability, it concludes, combined with his choice of the epistolary form that allowed him to both explore and display his emotional attachment to his subject, in large measure accounts for the unprecedented popularity and longevity of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
David Elliston Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (London: Allen Lane, 1976), 50.
- 2.
Tim Birkhead, The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology (London: Bloomsbury, 2008). See in particular Chapter 6, ‘The Novelty of Field Work’, 205–36.
- 3.
Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (1789) ed. Anne Secord (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3. All further references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.
- 4.
For the publishing history before 1970, see Edward A. Martin, A Bibliography of Gilbert White (Folkestone: Dawsons, 1970). Elsewhere, the ‘three’ books more published than Selborne are variously given as the Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, The Pilgrim’s Progress, the complete works of Shakespeare, and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. If the ‘fourth most published’ status ever in fact applied to Selborne, it certainly does no longer with several recent publishing phenomena such as Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series comprehensively overtaking it.
- 5.
For the status of Selborne in the nineteenth century, see in particular Mary Ellen Bellanca, Daybooks of Discovery: Nature Diaries in Britain, 1770–1870 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 78–107.
- 6.
Paul G.M. Foster, Gilbert White and his Records: A Scientific Biography (London: Christopher Helm, 1988), 159.
- 7.
Richard Mabey, Gilbert White: A Biography of the Author of The Natural History of Selborne (1986) new edn (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 6.
- 8.
Bellanca, Daybooks of Discovery, 78.
- 9.
Anne Secord, ‘Introduction’ to The Natural History of Selborne, xxvii, 241–70.
- 10.
Gentleman’s Magazine, 59, I (1789), 62–3. The ‘Chattertonian controversy’ concerned whether the work published as Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (London: T. Payne and Son, 1777) was genuinely by Thomas Rowley or in fact the work of the recently deceased Thomas Chatterton (1752–70), which they were.
- 11.
For the identification of Thomas White as the reviewer, see Mabey, Gilbert White, 207.
- 12.
ODNB.
- 13.
The Topographer, I (1789), 40–44.
- 14.
C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture, 1959 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959).
- 15.
Oliver Goldsmith, An History of the Earth and Animated Nature, 8 vols (London: J. Nourse, 1774).
- 16.
[Erasmus Darwin], The botanic garden, part II. containing the loves of the plants, a poem (Lichfield: J. Jackson and J. Johnson, 1789).
- 17.
The birds ‘ranged in figure wedge their way, / Intelligent of seasons’ and ‘high over seas / Flying’, Paradise Lost, VII, 426–29.
- 18.
Foster, Gilbert White and his Records, 15. Foster’s discussion of White’s literary tastes occupies 14–16.
- 19.
John Mulso, The Letters to Gilbert White of Selborne from his intimate friend and contemporary the Rev. John Mulso, ed. Rashleigh Holt-White (London: R.H. Porter, 1907), passim; Alan Bewell, Natures in Translation: Romanticism and Colonial Natural History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 162.
- 20.
John Richetti, ‘Introduction’ to The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2.
- 21.
Secord, ‘Introduction’, xvi.
- 22.
James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904, reprinted 1980), 480.
- 23.
Tobias Menely, ‘Traveling in Place: Gilbert White’s Cosmopolitan Parochialism’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 23 (2004): 46–65, 57.
- 24.
White’s changing position in the migration v. hibernation debate is explored in depth by Ted Dadswell in The Selborne Pioneer: Gilbert White as Naturalist and Scientist, a Re-examination, revised edition (London: Centaur Press, 2006), 38–49.
- 25.
[Daines Barrington], The naturalist’s journal (London: W. Sandby, 1767).
- 26.
Mabey, Gilbert White, 111.
- 27.
The Journals of Gilbert White, 1754–1793, ed Francesca Greenoak, 3 vols (London: Century Hutchinson, 1986–89), I, 10.
- 28.
White, Journals, I, 228.
- 29.
White, Journals, I. 319.
- 30.
White, Journals, I. 351. The ‘hedge-sparrow’ is an older name for the dunnock, Prunella modularis.
- 31.
Gilbert White, The natural history and antiquities of Selborne, in the county of Southampton: with engravings, and an appendix (London: Benjamin White, 1789), 311, 381–82. Rarely included now, the antiquities are the second half of the original book.
- 32.
It is reproduced in Foster, Gilbert White and his Records, 209–11.
- 33.
White’s ‘blue titmouse’ is the blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus. The ‘hedge-sparrow’ (dunnock) is frequently parasitised by the common cuckoo. The wood pigeon remains one of the most numerous birds in the British Isles.
- 34.
‘Beetle: An implement consisting of a heavy weight or ‘head,’ usually of wood, with a handle or stock, used for driving wedges or pegs’. OED.
- 35.
Several of the birds White lists are given different names today. These are: ‘ring-doves’, the wood pigeon, Columba palumbus; ‘cock-snipe’, the male common snipe Gallinago gallinago; ‘wind-hover’, the common kestrel, Falco tinnunculus; ‘fern-owls or goat-suckers’, the European nightjar, Caprimulgus europaeus; ‘missal-thrushes’, the mistle thrush, Turdus viscivorus; ‘bank-martin’, the European sand martin, Riparia riparia.
- 36.
White’s doves might be any of several species, but the ‘mournful manner’ probably identifies it as the wood pigeon, C. palumbus, or the rock dove, C. livia, better known as the domesticated pigeon. The ‘wood-pecker’ is the European green woodpecker, Picus viridis, familiar for its loud laughing call, known as a ‘yaffle’.
Bibliography
Allen, David Elliston. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. London: Allen Lane, 1976.
Barrington, Daines. The naturalist’s journal. London: W. Sandby, 1767.
Bellanca, Mary Ellen. Daybooks of Discovery: Nature Diaries in Britain, 1770–1870. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.
Bewell, Alan. Natures in Translation: Romanticism and Colonial Natural History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.
Birkhead, Tim. The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology. London: Bloomsbury, 2008.
Boswell, James. Life of Johnson. Edited by R.W. Chapman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904; reprinted 1980.
Chatterton, Thomas. Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century. London: T. Payne and Son, 1777.
Dadswell, Ted. The Selborne Pioneer: Gilbert White as Naturalist and Scientist, a Re-examination, revised edition. London: Centaur Press, 2006.
Darwin, Erasmus. The botanic garden, part II. containing the loves of the plants, a poem. Lichfield: J. Jackson and J. Johnson, 1789.
Foster, Paul G.M. Gilbert White and his Records: A Scientific Biography. London: Christopher Helm, 1988.
Goldsmith, Oliver. An History of the Earth and Animated Nature. 8 vols. London: J. Nourse, 1774.
Mabey, Richard. Gilbert White: A Biography of the Author of The Natural History of Selborne. New edition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.
Martin, Edward A. A Bibliography of Gilbert White. Folkestone: Dawsons, 1970.
Menely, Tobias. ‘Traveling in Place: Gilbert White’s Cosmopolitan Parochialism’. Eighteenth-Century Life 23 (2004): 46–65.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited by Alastair Fowler. London: Longman, 1971.
Mulso, John. The Letters to Gilbert White of Selborne from his intimate friend and contemporary the Rev. John Mulso. Edited by Rashleigh Holt-White. London: R.H. Porter, 1907.
‘Review of Gilbert White, The natural history and antiquities of Selborne’. The Topographer I (1789): 40–44.
Richetti, John. ‘Introduction’. In The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Edited by John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture, 1959. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.
White, Gilbert. The Journals of Gilbert White, 1754–1793. Edited by Francesca Greenoak. 3 vols. London: Century Hutchinson, 1986–89.
White, Gilbert. The natural history and antiquities of Selborne, in the county of Southampton: with engravings, and an appendix. London: Benjamin White, 1789a.
White, Gilbert. The Natural History of Selborne. Edited by Anne Secord. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
White, Thomas Holt. ‘Review of Gilbert White, The natural history and antiquities of Selborne’. Gentleman’s Magazine 59, part I (1789b): 62–3.
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Carey, B. (2020). The Literary Gilbert White. In: Carey, B., Greenfield, S., Milne, A. (eds) Birds in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32792-7_10
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