Joseph Banks and the British Museum:

The World of Collecting 1770–1830

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Neil A Chambers

There has been an upsurge of interest in the British Museum’s unrivalled collections and their place in eighteenth-century culture. Concentrating on the explorer and naturalist Joseph Banks (1743–1820), this book explores the early history of collections at the British Museum, the first public national museum to be established. Banks travelled around the world with James Cook on HMS Endeavour, making important plant, animal and insect collections. Becoming one of the major patrons of British exploration and science, Banks was a significant trustee and donor of material for the museum.

Chambers examines the ways different eighteenth-century collections (including Banks’s own) were managed, and how the British Museum and collecting more generally grew and changed in this important period of travel, exploration and empire.

Sample pages

• Joseph Banks and the British Musem: Introduction

Readership

Eighteenth-Century Studies, History of Travel and Exploration, History of Collecting and Curating, Empire Studies

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Banks as an Early Traveller and Collector, and the British Museum
3. Ethnography
   Exploration and Trade, 1768–95
   Later Status and Organization, 1808–18
   Conclusion
4. Natural History and Zoology
   From Private to Public: The Transferral of Some Major Collections, 1771–1805
   Banks as a Museum ‘Agent’ in the Market for Natural History, 1782–1810
   Reorganization and the Basement, 1805–10
   Co-ordinating Zoology: Some Acquisitions, 1810–16
   Final Years, 1816–20
   Conclusion
5. Investigating Natural History: Gradually Expanding Limits After 1800
   Arrangements for Public Collections on Voyages of Discovery: Investigator, 1801–05
   Resources and the Earth: Some Historical Points, 1798–1805
   Conclusion
6. Earth Sciences
   Presents ‘through the medium of Sir Jos. Banks’, 1800–15
   Growth and Consolidation, 1799–1815
   Organization, and Major Donations and Purchases, 1810–20
   Conclusion
7. Libraries and Antiquities
   British Traveller and Digger: 1767–80
   Assisting the Museum, 1778–1800
   Antiquities and Expansion, 1800–1820
   Reviews and Reorganization: The Turn of the Century
   Library and Antiquities: Continued Labours, 1805–1820
   Last Years and the Egyptian Controversy, To 1820 and After
8. Conclusion

Reviews

'A tantalizing taster to the wealth of information that we can expect from The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks; together these publications will shape how historians, biographers and other scholars will interpret Banks’s contribution to the world of science.'
– Andrea Wulf, Notes and Records of the Royal Society

'scrupulously researched and referenced'
– David Hibberd, Archives of Natural History

Related titles

• Nineteenth-Century Travels, Explorations and Empires: Writings from the Era of Imperial Consolidation, 1835–1910
• The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820
• The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765–1820
• Travels, Explorations and Empires, 1770–1835: Travel Writings on North America, the Far East, North and South Poles and the Middle East

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