Profiling nine important naturalists of the pre-Darwinian age, who set off to quantify, categorise and explain the New World

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the dawn of a golden age of science, during which time there was a dedicated drive to accurately categorise nature and explain the natural world. Enthusiastic naturalists, amateur and professional, set off to collect and classify plants and animals across the New World, and many of these finds still bear the names of those who discovered them today.

In this new and updated edition, The Noble Quest profiles nine notable naturalists of the pre-Darwinian age: early naturalists William Bartram and Alexander von Humboldt; inquisitive aristocrats Charles Waterton and Prince Maximilian of Wied; professional collectors David Douglas, John Kirk Townsend and John Richardson; and the last of the field naturalists Henry Walter Bates and John Wesley Powell.

All faced great adventures and hardship as they undertook their groundbreaking work and strived to quantify, categorise and rationally explain the planet’s flourishing ecosystems.

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'Stephen Bown’s wry style and deft choice of anecdotes underscore the depth of their passion for science.'

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‘. . . each story has all the elements of a good piece of fiction: interesting characters, smart plot twists and each conveys the full arc of human lives in an historical context . . . This is heady stuff: smart and entertaining and poignant.’