Henry McGhie’s book is the first authoritative biography of this extraordinary and influential Victorian naturalist. It is not just a simple chronological biography of Henry Dresser, but an account of an internationally important system of collecting and its outputs. It traces the evolution of British ornithology from a pursuit by “men of means” towards the “standardised, institutionalised and professionalised” science we know today.
In exploring Dresser’s status as one of the most important ornithologists and natural history collectors in Britain, the book delves into the wider world of ornithology in the mid to late-19th and early-20th centuries. Dresser was “a born collector” and McGhie gives fascinating insight into the era in which the peak period of natural history collecting occurred.
With the bulk of Dresser’s large collections of birds passing to Manchester Museum, the biggest university museum in the UK, there is probably no one better placed to explore Dresser than McGhie, who is the head of collections and curator of zoology of the same institution. Museums, libraries and archives at home and abroad have been used to flesh out Dresser’s life and contacts. It is the unrivalled access to the wealth of previously unpublished material in Manchester and beyond – including letters, diaries, photographs, manuscripts and specimens – that make this a richly detailed and thought-provoking book; indeed, the sheer quantity of facts can be overwhelming at times.
Dresser was a shrewd businessman and used his financial acumen to fund and facilitate his collecting – his extraordinary adventure in Mexico and Texas at the height of the US civil war is well covered. Most interestingly, after a century in private hands, the university’s 2006 acquisition of an album of photographs of Dresser’s scientific correspondents means that many of his networks of collaborators are pictured. The book is peppered with an array of remarkable characters, including a photograph of the splendidly kilted “lion hunter” Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming.
Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta offers a memorable description of the ornithologist Nikolai Severtzov as “hideously ugly with a voice to match and his face all gashed with the marks of where other savages had tried to cut his head off”. Among all the facts and dates such colour makes this a far from dry read.
There is much to comment on in the 15 chapters and four appendices outlining Dresser’s background and life. The chapters on the collecting and writing of his magnum opus, A History of the Birds of Europe, published in eight volumes between 1871 and 1882, are particularly interesting. This was, as McGhie rightly points out, one of the most ambitious bird books of the late-19th century.
McGhie skilfully outlines how Dresser secured his position in ornithological society with all the personalities and dramas therein, and how this vast network of contacts and collectors was used to amass collections and data, which underpinned his publications. The book is well researched and the endnotes are great – tracking an individual reference to source is joyously easy. I was also struck by McGhie’s decision to explore collecting and controversy. This is a timely contribution to the long view on Victorian ornithology. I applaud the inclusion of a list of recent scientific publications based on Dresser’s collections (1985-2017). If anything, my only complaint is that such modern scientific use of historical collections might have been discussed in greater detail.
This is a thoughtful study of a major naturalist. It shows how our understanding of birds was deepened by the collections and networks Dresser and his contemporaries built. This is a worthy contribution to the history of ornithology.
In exploring Dresser’s status as one of the most important ornithologists and natural history collectors in Britain, the book delves into the wider world of ornithology in the mid to late-19th and early-20th centuries. Dresser was “a born collector” and McGhie gives fascinating insight into the era in which the peak period of natural history collecting occurred.
With the bulk of Dresser’s large collections of birds passing to Manchester Museum, the biggest university museum in the UK, there is probably no one better placed to explore Dresser than McGhie, who is the head of collections and curator of zoology of the same institution. Museums, libraries and archives at home and abroad have been used to flesh out Dresser’s life and contacts. It is the unrivalled access to the wealth of previously unpublished material in Manchester and beyond – including letters, diaries, photographs, manuscripts and specimens – that make this a richly detailed and thought-provoking book; indeed, the sheer quantity of facts can be overwhelming at times.
Dresser was a shrewd businessman and used his financial acumen to fund and facilitate his collecting – his extraordinary adventure in Mexico and Texas at the height of the US civil war is well covered. Most interestingly, after a century in private hands, the university’s 2006 acquisition of an album of photographs of Dresser’s scientific correspondents means that many of his networks of collaborators are pictured. The book is peppered with an array of remarkable characters, including a photograph of the splendidly kilted “lion hunter” Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming.
Charles Darwin’s daughter Henrietta offers a memorable description of the ornithologist Nikolai Severtzov as “hideously ugly with a voice to match and his face all gashed with the marks of where other savages had tried to cut his head off”. Among all the facts and dates such colour makes this a far from dry read.
There is much to comment on in the 15 chapters and four appendices outlining Dresser’s background and life. The chapters on the collecting and writing of his magnum opus, A History of the Birds of Europe, published in eight volumes between 1871 and 1882, are particularly interesting. This was, as McGhie rightly points out, one of the most ambitious bird books of the late-19th century.
McGhie skilfully outlines how Dresser secured his position in ornithological society with all the personalities and dramas therein, and how this vast network of contacts and collectors was used to amass collections and data, which underpinned his publications. The book is well researched and the endnotes are great – tracking an individual reference to source is joyously easy. I was also struck by McGhie’s decision to explore collecting and controversy. This is a timely contribution to the long view on Victorian ornithology. I applaud the inclusion of a list of recent scientific publications based on Dresser’s collections (1985-2017). If anything, my only complaint is that such modern scientific use of historical collections might have been discussed in greater detail.
This is a thoughtful study of a major naturalist. It shows how our understanding of birds was deepened by the collections and networks Dresser and his contemporaries built. This is a worthy contribution to the history of ornithology.
Douglas Russell is the senior curator of birds’ eggs and nests in the department of life sciences, Natural History Museum, London
