Poetry and Literature
While naturalists attempted to craft objective, detailed descriptions of the plants and animals they found, literary writers turned the science of nature into the poetry of words. William Bartram’s Travels, a book documenting his trip through the southeastern United States in the 1770s, was exceptional in combining scientific descriptions with romantic prose. The Travels influenced famous poets such as Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge. In the poem “Ruth,” Wordsworth immortalized a figure inspired by Bartram: “He spake of plants that hourly change / Their blossoms, through a boundless range / Of intermingling hues.”

Naturalists could also be poets, and poets naturalists. Ornithologist Alexander Wilson wrote The Foresters, an effusive poem about his journey on foot from Philadelphia to Niagara Falls in 1804. Henry David Thoreau, best known for his 1854 book Walden, or Life in the Woods, collected and preserved more than 900 specimens of Massachusetts plants. The artful arrangement of his Lygodium palmatum reveals a sensitivity to the poetry of nature that more science-oriented naturalists did not always share.

1. William Bartram (1739–1823)
Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida
The journey that John Bartram’s son William made from 1773 to 1776 is famous because of this book. It is not a simple description of his trip to the American Southeast. Bartram constantly shifts modes of writing, combining lists of plant names with dramatic adventures (such as an encounter with ferocious alligators) and meditations on Native American ways of life. The book was an immediate success and influenced romantic writers such as Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge.