Banks in full flower

Harold B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks 1743-1820 . British Museum (Natural History), London, 1988. Pp. 671. £45.00. ISBN 0 565 009931. Harold B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820): a guide to biographical and bibliographical sources . St Paul’s Bibliographies, Winchester, 1987. Pp. 328. £45.00. ISBN 0906795 451. Judith Diment and C.J. Humphries (ed.), Banks’ Florilegium: a publication in 34 parts of 738 copperplate engravings of plants collected on Captain Cook’s first voyage . Alecto Historical Editions, London, 1980-88. About £147,000. Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks: a life . Collins Harvill, London, 1988. Pp. 328. £15.00. ISBN 0002173506. £6.95 pbk. ISBN 0002723409. Like moths round a flame, historians of science have a habit of clustering round particular key pivotal figures. They scrutinize their published works with ever closer and closer attention; they disinter their drafts and journals and letters; they argue endlessly about what exactly was meant, where the ideas came from and what happened when. The most salient of these scholarly ‘industries’ are those devoted to Darwin and Newton, each of them sufficiently epoch-making in what they thought and wrote to act as a lure for the more philosophical as well as for those whose primary relish is for the basic excavating. The latter, indeed, is all-important: a full-scale historical ‘industry’ can scarcely arise if the material calling for study has all along been fully in print. There needs to be a great deal as well buried out of sight, which, once revealed, is capable of modifying the received interpretations and thereby engendering continuing debate.