Peter Collinson’s life is a microcosm of eighteenth-century natural history. A London Quaker, a draper by trade, and a passionate gardener and naturalist by avocation, Collinson was what we would now call a facilitator in natural science, disseminating botanical and horticultural knowledge during the Enlightenment. He influenced men such as Comte de Buffon and Linnaeus. He found clients for the Philadelphia Quaker farmer and naturalist, John Bartram, at a time when the English landscape was evolving to emphasize trees and shrubs, and the more exotic the better. Thus, American plants populated great estates like those of the Dukes of Richmond, Norfolk, and Bedford, as well as the Chelsea Physic Garden, and nurseries of James Gordon and Robert Furber. Botanic painters such as Mark Catesby and Georg Dionysius Ehret painted American plants in Collinson’s garden. His membership in the Royal Society enabled him to broaden his scope: he encouraged Franklin’s electrical experiments and had the results published, he corresponded about myriad natural phenomena, and he was ahead of his time in understanding the extinction of animals and the migration of birds. Though a man of modest Quaker demeanor, because of his passion for natural science, he had an unprecedented effect on the exchange of scientific information on both sides of the Atlantic. In this monograph, the authors give a convincing biographical portrait of Collinson. He “speaks” to the reader throughout the book in a distinct voice.

Jean O’Neill (1915–2008) was awarded the Gold Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society in 2001. She concentrated her scholarly research on Collinson’s life and writings and his place in Anglo-European history. Lady O’Neill, wife of the late Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O’Neill, was a passionate lover of nature and frequent author of articles in horticulture. She had a keen interest in the history of plants. She was chairwoman of the National Trust Gardens Committee and a fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

Elizabeth P. McLean, a graduate of the Arboretum School of the Barnes Foundation, is Research Associate in Botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and on the boards of the Library Company of Philadelphia (having served as past president) and the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. Her particular expertise is in the Anglo-American horticultural relationships of the eighteenth century. She has written various garden history articles, and is co-author, with architectural historian Mark Reinberger, of the forthcoming Country Houses and Landscapes of Colonial Philadelphia.

Indexed in H.W. Wilson’s Essay and General Literature Index.