Joseph Banks: A Life

By Patrick O'Brian

Book Overview

Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), was a naturalist, explorer, president for more than forty years of the Royal Society, Britain's oldest scientific institution, and one of Australia's founding fathers. He first rose to fame when, as a young botanist, he accompanied Captain Cook on his epic circumnavigation that resulted in the discovery of Australia. He was a central figure in a generation that transformed an insular monarchy into a modern industrial powerhouse. Yet a complete picture of Banks's long life has never emerged from the vast archive left at his death. The young Banks sailed on expeditions to North America and Iceland as well as the Pacific; he was also instrumental in establishing Kew Gardens as one of the world's greatest botanical centers. An indefatigable correspondent, he had a wide circle of friends and associates, including Cuvier, Watt, Samuel Johnson, and Edward Gibbon. Patrick O'Brian's masterful biography, which makes full use of Banks's letters and journals (some hitherto unknown), brings from the shadows a man of enduring importance. Banks emerges as a cheerful, forthright, and hospitable man whose true genius lay in promoting the enthusiasms of others. His legacy survives not only in his magnificent Florilegium, the record of his botanical studies in the South Seas, but in the development of the Australian continent and the tenor and tradition of subsequent scientific enterprise.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879239301
• ISBN13: 9780879239305
• Release Date: September 1994
• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.2" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

excellent biography

The book is clearly written and filled with information about the time and place of its subject.

An Interesting Piece of Work, But...

I, on the other hand, have never read any of the Aubrey & Maturin books, but I'm extremely interested in the Cook expeditions of which Banks played so much a part. I think it must be because I can see Banks Island right outside my window. Anyway, I must say that, after reading this book, I was prepared to believe Banks walked on water. Founder of modern botany (and modern science generally), explorer, developer of Kew and on and on. Certainly one of the giants of British naval exploration.Alas! Cook biographers have been a little less kind to Banks. While often portrayed as a hard driving scientist, he has also been portrayed as a bit of an upper-class twit, always petulent and silly. Which is it? Probably somewhere in the middle. Read this book, but keep an open mind about the hagiography!

O'Brian's "Banks" presages Aubrey & Maturin

Having read every one -- all 18, I think -- of the wonderful Aubrey & Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, coming across O'Brian's earlier "Joseph Banks" is a special pleasure. The same wonderful O'Brian dry wit is there, the same fascinated and fascinating focus on the late 18th century, British politics and society, and the sea. O'Brian's "Banks" is an easy read, compared with many scholarly biographies. That is because, actually, it doesn't really qualify as a "scholarly" effort. It is more discursive, easy-going, unpretentious. Delightful is the word that most aptly describes O'Brian's writing in general, and that applies here. Of special interest, though, is that the character of Jack Aubrey is prefigured, very briefly, in the description of a sea-captain acquaintance of Banks's, and Stephen Maturin himself, while not found in person here, is prefigured by the career of Banks himself: explorer, biologist, botanist, collector, and man of the world. O'Brian's "Joseph Banks" is not for everyone, but is certainly for any one of the thousands of O'Brian addicts. Which makes one muse and wonder: when, oh when is "The Hundred Days" coming out in paperback so I can line it up with the other eighteen volumes?