Unsung History24 Huhti 2023

The Plant Revolution and 19th Century American Literature

During the 19th Century, growing international trade and imperialist conquest combined with new technologies to transport and care for flora led to a burgeoning fascination with plant life. American writers, from Emily Dickinson to Frederick Douglass played with plant imagery to make sense of their world and their country and to bolster their political arguments.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Mary Kuhn, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and author of The Garden Politic: Global Plants and Botanical Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Down by the Salley Gardens,” performed by Celtic Aire, United States Air Force Band; the composition is traditional, and the lyrics are by Willian Butler Yeats; the recording is in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is from Plate VI of Familiar Lectures on Botany, by Almira Phelps, 1838 edition.

Additional Sources and References:

“The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved the Plant Kingdom,” by Luke Keogh, Arnoldia Volume 74, Issue 4, May 17, 2017.
“History of Kew,” Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
“The Great British Tea Heist,” by Sarah Rose, Smithsonian Magazine, March 9, 2010.
“Almira Phelps,” History of American Women.
“‘How Many Stamens Has Your Flower?’ The Botanical Education of Emily Dickinson,” by Anne Garner, New York Academy of Medicine, April 28, 2016.
“Emily Dickinson’s Schooling: Amherst Academy,” Emily Dickinson Museum.
“Gardens at the Stowe Center,” Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.
“Hawthorne in the Garden,” by W.H. Demick, The House of the Seven Gables, July 1, 2020.
“Frederick Douglass On How Slave Owners Used Food As A Weapon Of Control,” by Nina Martyris, NPR, February 10, 2017.
“Cedar Hill: Frederick Douglass's Rustic Sanctuary,” National Park Service.
“Amoral Abolitionism: Frederick Douglass and the Environmental Case against Slavery,” by Cristin Ellis, American Literature 1 June 2014; 86 (2): 275–303.
“‘Buried in Guano’: Race, Labor, and Sustainability,” by Jennifer C. James, American Literary History 24, no. 1 (2012): 115–42.
“The Intelligent Plant,” by Michael Pollan, The New Yorker, December 15, 2013.
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions, 2015.
The Overstory, by Richard Powers, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate--Discoveries from a Secret World, by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books, 2016.

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