Joseph Banks: A Life by Patrick O'Brian

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Slight slant to spine. Pages Sunned. Fading to spine. Binding is still very good.

Joseph Banks was one of the most influential figures in British maritime history and the country's development of natural sciences.

Born in 1743, he travelled with Captain Cook on the Endeavour, collecting thousands of plant and animal specimens. Unofficially, the first director of the Botanic Gardens at Kew, Banks, was also President of the Royal Society for a remarkable 42 years.

Patrick O’Brian has written a biography of Banks, notable for its erudition and sympathy with its polymathic subject. Drawing on Banks’s extensive correspondence and journals, as well as sources as diverse as the Proceedings of the Royal Society and the diaries of Fanny Burney, O’Brian has produced a rounded portrait that does justice to an extraordinary man and the range of his achievements. (back cover)