Joseph Hooker Correspondence Project

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 – 1911) was a trailblazing botanist and explorer and Kew’s second Director. Detailing plant diversity and economic botany throughout his many expeditions, he remains an influential figure to modern botanical science. 

During his career he was also a prolific correspondent, writing to family, friends and colleagues, including Charles Darwin, and we are fortunate to hold an extensive archival collection at Kew. The Joseph Hooker Correspondence project is working to make his letters held in Kew’s archive, and other institutions’, available online. The project originally began with a partnership between Kew and the University of Sussex to produce digital images and full transcriptions of Hooker's Indian letters. Staff at Kew are continuing the project with the digitisation and transcription of further series of Hooker's correspondence. A team of expert remote volunteers transcribe the letters.

The formation of this online repository, comprised largely of previously unpublished archive material, is intended to facilitate academic research in such fields as botany and other natural sciences, horticulture, British imperialism, garden history, the history of science and the history of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Kew also hopes to bring knowledge of Joseph Hooker to a wider audience and to extend awareness of the extent and significance of his work.

Objectives

• Creation of a comprehensive resource relating to Joseph Hooker
• Formation of an on-line repository of digital images and transcriptions of Joseph Hooker’s letters 
• Raise awareness of Joseph Hooker as one of the UK’s eminent scientist and bring his work to a wider audience, via publications in print and on-line, conferences and exhibitions
   

Sir Hugh and Lady Stevenson

Team lead

Kiri Ross-Jones

Team

Rachael Gardner

Transcriptions and digital images of Joseph Hooker’s letters

Currently available online are:
•    Letters from Hooker’s Expedition to India (1847-1851), including accounts of his pioneering exploration and plant hunting in the Himalayas.
•    A series primarily composed of letters from Hooker to pre-eminent American botanist Asa Gray, with whom he went on a plant hunting tour of America in 1877 and shared a lifelong scientific dialogue.
•    Letters written by Hooker during his time as assistant surgeon and unofficial botanist to James Clark Ross’s expedition of discovery to Antarctica (1839-1843)
•    Other letters have been digitised and transcribed and will be available shortly..

Guide to reading the correspondence

Joseph Hooker’s Antarctic Journal in the Biodiversity Heritage Library 
 

• University of Sussex
• The Natural History Museum, London
• Harvard University

Kew's Joseph Hooker Archive Collection

• Bentham, G. & Hooker, J.D. (1862-1883). Genera Plantarum ad Exemplaria Imprimis Herbariis Kewensibus Servata Definita, 3 Vols. Reeve, London.
• Bentham, G. revised by Hooker, J.D. (1887-1908). Handbook of the British Flora. L. Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1844-1859). The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. discovery ships ‘Erebus’ and ‘Terror’ in the years 1839-1843, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross. Part I. Flora Antarctica.L. Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J. D. (1855) Flora Novae-Zelandiae (Botany of the Antarctic voyage: volume 2). L. Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J. D. (1859) Flora Tasmaniae (Botany of the Antarctic voyage: volume 3). L. Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1849, 1851). Enumeration of the Plants of the Galapagos Islands, with descriptions of the new species. Proceedings of the Linnean Society I: 276-279; Transactions of the Linnean Society 20: 163 - 234.
• Hooker, J.D. (1849-1851). The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya. Reeve, Benham and Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1855a). Himalayan Journals, or Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas etc. John Murray, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1855b). Illustrations of Himalayan Plants. L. Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1863). On Welwitschia, a new genus of Gnetaceae. Transactions of the Linnean Society 24(1): 1 – 64.
• Hooker, J.D. (1866) Insular Floras. reprinted in Gardeners' Chronicle 1867.
• Hooker, J.D. (1870). The Students’ Flora of the British Islands. MacMillan, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1872-1897). The Flora of British India. ‘Assisted by Various Botanists’. L. Reeve, London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1876). Botany. Macmillan, London.
• Hooker, J.D. & Ball, J. (1878) Journal of a tour in Marocco and the Great Atlas. Macmillan. London.
• Hooker, J.D. (1881a). Nepenthes northiana. Gardeners Chronicle 16: 717.
• Hooker, J.D. (1881b). Presidential address to the Geographical Section of the British Association – On geographical distribution. British Association  Address Reports 727-738;Nature XXIV : 443-448.
• Hooker, J.D. & Gray, A. (1882). The vegetation of the Rocky Mountain region and a comparison with, that of other parts of the world.Bulletin of the United States Geological and Geophysical Survey of the Territories 6: 1-62.
• Hooker, J.D. & Thomson, T. (1855). Flora Indica: Being a Systematic Account of the Plants of British India. W. Pamplin, London.
• Trimen, H. & Hooker, J.D. (1898-1900). AHandbook to the Flora of Ceylon, Containing Descriptions of all the Species of Flowering Plants Indigenous to the Island, and Notes on their History, Distribution, and Uses. Part IV. Dulau, London, 1898; Part V 1900.

Works Primarily About Hooker

• Allan, M. (1967) The Hookers of Kew, 1785-1911.  Michael Joseph, London.
• Bellon, Richard (2005) 'A question of merit: John Hutton Balfour, Joseph Hooker and the ‘concussion’ over the Edinburgh chair of botany', Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 36: 25-54.
• Bellon, Richard (2006) 'Joseph Hooker Takes a 'Fixed Post': Transmutation and the “Present Unsatisfactory State of Systematic Botany', 1844-1860', Journal of the History of Biology. 39: 1-39.
• Browne, E. J. (1979) CR Darwin and JD Hooker: Episodes in the History of Plant Geography, 1840-1860. Imperial College, University of London, PhD, London.
• Browne, J. (1978) ‘The Charles Darwin–Joseph Hooker correspondence: An analysis of manuscript sources and their use in biography’. Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History. 8: 351–66.
• Desmond, R. (1975) 'The Hookers and the development of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew'. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
• Desmond, R. (1995) Kew: A history of the Royal Botanic Gardens. The Harvill Press, London.
• Desmond, R. (1999) Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker: Traveller and Plant Collector.  Antique Collector’s Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk.
• Endersby, J. (2008). Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
• Endersby, J. (2008) ‘Joseph Hooker: a philosophical botanist'. Journal of Biosciences. (vol. 33, no. 2, June 2008): 163-169.
• Endersby (forthcoming) 'From having no Herbarium.' Local knowledge vs. metropolitan expertise: Joseph Hooker's Australasian correspondence with William Colenso and Ronald Gunn'. Pacific Science.
• Griggs, P.J. (2011). Joseph Hooker: Botanical Trailblazer. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
• Huxley, L. (1918) Life and Letters of Joseph Dalton Hooker.  John Murray, London.
• Stevens, P. F. (1991) 'George Bentham and the Kew Rule'. Improving the Stability of Names: needs and options. D. L. Hawksworth. Königstein, Koeltz Scientific Books: 157-68.
• Stevens, P. F. (1997) 'J.D. Hooker, George Bentham, Asa Gray and Ferdinand Mueller on Species Limits in Theory and Practice: a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Debate and Its Repercussions'. Historical Records of Australian Science 11 3: 345-70.
• Turrill, W. B. (1953) Pioneer Plant Geography: the Phytogeographical Researches of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague.
• Turrill, W. B. (1963) Joseph Dalton Hooker: botanist, explorer and administrator. Scientific Book Club, London.
• Williamson, M. (1984). Sir Joseph Hooker's lecture on insular floras.Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 22: 55–77.

Works Concerning Victorian Natural History

• Barton, R. (1998) 'Huxley, Lubbock, and Half a Dozen Others: Professionals and gentlemen in the formation of the X Club, 1851–1864'. Isis 89(3): 410–444.
• Bellon, Richard (2003) 'The Great Question in Agitation': George Bentham and the origin of species', Archives of Natural History, 30, no. 2: 282-297.
• Brockway, L. (1979) 'Science and Colonial Expansion: the role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens'. American Ethnologist 6, no. 3: 449-465.
• Browne, J. (1983) The Secular Ark: studies in the history of biogeography.  Yale University Press, New Haven.
• Bynum, W. F. (1984) 'Charles Lyell’s Antiquity of Man and Its Critics'. Journal of the History of Biology 17 2: 153-87.
• Camerini, J. (1997) 'Remains of the day: Early Victorians in the field'. In Lightman (ed.): 354-77.
• Caudill, E. (1994) 'The bishop-eaters: The publicity campaign for Darwin and 'On the Origin of Species''. Journal of the History of Ideas.
• Desmond, A. (1989) The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
• Drayton, R. H. (2000) Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the 'Improvement' of the World. Yale University Press, New Haven.
• Endersby, J. (2009) 'Lumpers and splitters: Darwin, Hooker, and the search for order.' Science 326, 1496.
• Hull, D. L. (1973), (ed.) Darwin and his Critics: the Reception of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community. (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1973).
• Jardine, N., J. Secord, et al. (1996), (eds.) Cultures of Natural History.(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Lightman, B. (1997), (ed.) Victorian Science in Context.(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997).
• MacLeod, R.(1974) 'The Ayrton Incident': A Commentary on the Relations between Science and Government in England, 1870–1873’. Science and Values: Patterns of Tradition and Change. A. Thackray and E. Mendelsohn, (Eds.). New York: 45-78.
• Porter, D. (1993) 'On the road to the Origin with Darwin, Hooker, and Gray'. Journal of the History of Biology 26 (1): 1-38.
• Rehbock, P. (1983) The Philosophical naturalists: themes in early Nineteenth-Century British biology. Madison, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press.
• Secord, J. A. (2000) Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Strick, J. E. (2000) Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

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