The History of Natural History: An Annotated Bibliography. A Guide to Sources of Information: Histories, Bibliographies, Biographies, Library Resources etc. (review)

It is almost inevitable that the second edition of a book is larger than the first. But in this case it is worth reporting that the second edition is not only one third larger, but astonishingly one third cheaper than that retailed by Garland for £98.00 in 1994. As an added bonus the format is much improved from the merely adequate to the present more lavish design. This is exemplified by the provision of forty pages of coloured plates ranging from portraits of largely be-whiskered naturalists through illustrations from some of the books listed to views of venerable library interiors. Sadly this work must stand as a memorial to Gavin Bridson, who died shortly before publication, after a productive career that included spells in the libraries of the Natural History Museum and the Linnean Society in London before becoming Bibliographer and Principal Research Scholar at the Carnegie Mellon University's Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh.

There are many strengths to this book, not least the sheer number of entries, almost 13,000, aimed at historians of science, amateur and professional, and practising naturalists. It covers post medieval natural history, so alas, there are no centaurs or unicorns, although the Loch Ness monster gets mentioned in the brief Crypto zoology section. There are also chapters of great interest to bibliographers. The Biographical Section demonstrates both the strength and some weaknesses of this work. Over 2,500 subjects are covered. Everyone who is something in the history of natural history seems to be included. Leading scientists such as both Darwins, Charles and Erasmus, Linnaeus, Mendel, and Sloane appear and have extensive but wisely selective listings. Scientists rub shoulders with bibliographers, explorers, illustrators, and nurserymen.

Annotations are only provided for a minority of entries and usually restricted to the severely factual, providing details of individual chapters in collective works. In a few cases the lack of annotations is extremely frustrating, particularly in the biographical section. While it is good to know that there are two biographies of one Frank Buckland published in 1885 and 1967 there is nothing to indicate why he was included. As these are the only two references to him in the book we cannot deduce his importance or field of interest from other sections. We are left in the dark as to whether or not he appears in the Dictionary of National Biography (which he does) or other works. The arrangement in the other sections is much more user-friendly as they are shorter and more specialized. The cross references are good as are the three indexes. That said the Index of Places generally only goes down to country level. For countries with many entries the reader is confronted with forbidding blocks of reference numbers.

While Bridson acknowledges the usefulness of the Internet in bibliographical research it is clear that he never really embraced the digital age. Websites are all but invisible in this volume, a serious lack given that even local natural history societies have at least a page or two to demonstrate their existence. The organisations with which Bridson has been most closely associated all have valuable web resources catering to all levels of interest. For both historians of science and bibliographers it is regrettable that the Darwin Online website is not mentioned. This is the very model of what a scholarly website should be. It contains the complete works in many editions and translations with colour images of all his books including spines and covers, to say nothing of the manuscripts.

While the author in his Introduction states that the work is 'only a personal selection and much of this voluminous field of literature has been omitted to keep this literature list down to its present proportions'. This reviewer...