Gilbert White, John Ray and the construction of The Natural History of Selborne

When compiling his seminal work, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), Gilbert White relied on a number of natural history books in order to manage and accumulate information. One of White's most important books was his copy of John Ray's Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium, a work frequently mentioned in Selborne. White's annotated copy of this work, now in the Whipple Library, Cambridge, provides new insight into his working practices and methods of observing and recording the natural world. White's copy of Ray's Synopsis was essential for assembling information for the letters which formed one of the most successful and influential works of eighteenth-century natural history in Britain.

Review of the international scientific-practical conference "Languages and Cultures" (23rd to 24th of May, the City of Kostroma, Russia)

The article provides an overview of the scientific-practical conference "Languages and Cultures", which took place on the 23rd to 24th of May, 2019, on the basis of Kostroma State University. The brief review introduces the papers which present the results of investigations performed on the material of literary texts relevant to the literary issues – genre typology of ancient and old Russian texts (El'vira Akimovа), conversational style in the legal thrillers of John Ray Grisham Jr, "talking name" in the short stories by Sherwood Anderson (Svetlana Kochenova), allusions as examples of intertextual relations in the works by Kurt Vonnegut (Anna Yakhontova), deployed or hidden meanings in vers libre by Ciaran Gerard Carson and Tymoteusz Karpowicz (Yevgeniya Zimina), etc. The authors of the article draw attention to works devoted to translated works (Yelena Zolinova and others). The article defines the directions of scientific research presented in the reports on the work of the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky.

‘The word is incest’:1 Narrative, affect and judgement in and across the Lolitas

Through intertext, adaptation, nominative re-births and epiphanies, Lolita (1955) enacts a kind of incestuous narcissism, a self-consuming act of libidinality and linguistic desire that offers a fantasy of self-exculpation and discovery, a narrative of abuse and trauma, and a meta-fiction that revels in the performative perversions its characters suffer from. Each part of the novel is born of an incestuous relationship with an earlier (part of the) text, every subsequent re-statement of Lolita carries this textual-familial weight.This essay frames an analysis of the novel and its two filmic daughters in the light of these three strands: a realist fantasy of a man’s maniac relationship with a girl who becomes his daughter and sexual partner; his ‘confession’, her distorted trauma tale; the various formal, stylistic, intertextual “incests” that stand in dizzying juxtaposition to the ‘ethical impact’ assigned to it by the pre-facing John Ray Jr.

Specimens, slips and systems: Daniel Solander and the classification of nature at the world's first public museum, 1753–1768

The British Museum, based in Montague House, Bloomsbury, opened its doors on 15 January 1759, as the world's first state-owned public museum. The Museum's collection mostly originated from Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose vast holdings were purchased by Parliament shortly after his death. The largest component of this collection was objects of natural history, including a herbarium made up of 265 bound volumes, many of which were classified according to the late seventeenth-century system of John Ray (1627–1705). The 1750s saw the emergence of Linnaean binomial nomenclature, following the publication of Carl Linnaeus' Species Plantarum (1753) and Systema Naturae (1758). In order to adopt this new system for their collections, the Trustees of the British Museum chose to employ the Swedish naturalist and former student of Linnaeus, Daniel Solander (1733–1782) to reclassify the collection. Solander was ordered to devise a new system for classifying and cataloguing Sloane's natural history collection, which would allow both Linnaeans and those who followed earlier systems to access it. Solander's work was essential for allowing the British Museum to realize its aim of becoming a public centre of learning, adapting the collection to reflect the diversity of classificatory practices which were existent by the 1760s. This task engaged Solander until 1768, when he received an offer from Joseph Banks (1743–1820) to accompany him on HMS Endeavour to the Pacific.

Willughby's Buzzard: names and misnomers of the European Honey-buzzard (Pernis apivorus)

The European Honey-buzzard (Pernis apivorus) was first accurately described and clearly distinguished from the Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their Ornithology, originally published in Latin in 1676. Alfred Newton's statement that Pierre Belon had described the species over a century earlier is not entirely correct, as Belon confused this honey-buzzard's features with those of the common buzzard and even appeared uncertain whether it was a separate species. One of Willughby's important contributions to ornithology was the identification and use of “characteristic marks” to distinguish and identify species, including those that distinguish the European Honey-buzzard from the Common Buzzard. Because Willughby provided the first accurate description of Pernis apivorus – and because his contribution to ornithology has never been formally recognized – we propose that the common name of the European Honey-buzzard be changed to Willughby's Buzzard.

Using John Nidd's annotated books in the Wren Library to reassess his contribution to John Ray's Catalogus (1660)

In his Catalogus plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium (1660), John Ray acknowledged the help of his senior colleague at Trinity College, John Nidd, to whom he said the reader was chiefly indebted for the observations included in the work. Many of Nidd's surviving books in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, have a characteristic suite of marginal annotations. Comparison of the observations in the Catalogus with Nidd's annotations in his copies of Bennet's Tabidorum theatrum (1656), Hofmann's De medicamentis officinalibus (1646) and Lauremberg's Apparatus plantarius primus (1632) and Horticultura (1631) show that most of the passages cited by Ray are amongst those marked by Nidd. By contrast, Nidd's copy of Charleton's Spiritus gorgonicus, vi sua saxipara exutus (1650), a book cited once by Ray, is not annotated. This evidence is consistent with Ray's account of Nidd's involvement in the Catalogus and does not support the view of Charles Raven, Ray's biographer, who sought to minimize Nidd's role. Annotations in a copy of Camerarius's Hortus medicus et philosophicus (1588) from the library of James Duport, another of Ray's Trinity colleagues, also correspond to passages cited by Ray and may have been made by Duport himself, suggesting that he too may have been involved in compiling the observations in the Catalogus.