本书对18世纪博物学家马克·凯茨比的生活、艺术以及他描绘北美动植物的开创性工作进行了生动的探讨。

本书探讨了18世纪英国**的博物学家、探险家、艺术家和作家马·凯茨比（1683-1749）的生活和工作。在凯茨比的一生中，科学在这个世界里从业余转变为专业。凯茨比在全球旅行中工作，收集自然材料和直接观察自然事物。他在新大陆度过了两个漫长的时期—分别是在弗吉尼亚（1712-19），以及在南卡罗来纳和巴哈马（1722-6）。在他的两卷本《卡罗莱纳州、佛罗里达州和巴哈马群岛自然史》（1731-43）中，他反映了自然界的兴奋、戏剧性和美丽，被同时代的John Bartram尊称为 "世界上**图书馆里的饰物"。本书交织了艺术史、科学史、自然史插图、绘画材料、图书史、纸张研究、园林史和殖民史等元素，这本经过精心研究的书汇集了大量未发表的图片以及凯茨比的新发现，这些发现加上记录他在野外采集和经历的**手资料，将这位非凡的先锋博物学家的故事生动地展现在人们面前。

The life and art of the 18th-

century naturalist Mark Catesby, and his pioneering work depicting the flora and fauna of North America, are explored in vibrant detail.

This book explores the life and work of the celebrated eighteenth-century English naturalist, explorer, artist and author Mark Catesby (1683–1749). During Catesby’s lifetime, science was poised to shift from a world of amateur virtuosi to one of professional experts. Working against a backdrop of global travel that incorporated collecting and direct observation of nature, Catesby spent two prolonged periods in the New World – in Virginia (1712–

19) and South Carolina and the Bahamas (1722–6). In his majestic two-

volume Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731–

43), esteemed by his contemporary John Bartram as ‘an ornament for the finest library in the world’, he reflected the excitement, drama and beauty of the natural world. Interweaving elements of art history, history of science, natural history illustration, painting materials, book history, paper studies, garden history and colonial history, this meticulously researched volume brings together a wealth of unpublished images as well as newly discovered letters by Catesby, which, with their first-

hand accounts of his collecting and encounters in the wild, bring the story of this extraordinary pioneer naturalist vividly to life.