Detail from the bookplate of the English bibliographer, paleontologist and geologist Charles Davies Sherborn, engraved by his father in 1890. In the image can be seen a bust of Shakespeare alongside a portrait of Darwin, a copy of the Venus de Milo alongside a microscope. The Latin on the bookcase reads "books are friends, nature is God" .
Featured on PDR in the essay The Poetry of Victorian Science
In 1848, the mineralogist, pioneer of photography, and amateur poet Robert Hunt published The Poetry of Science, a hugely ambitious work that aimed to offer a survey of scientific knowledge while also communicating the metaphysical, moral, and aesthetic aspects of science to the general reader. Gregory Tate explores what the book can teach us about Victorian desires to reconcile the languages of poetry and science.
Also appearing in the essay…
Bookplate of Charles Davies Sherborn
Date
1890
