Henry Smeathman, the Flycatcher

Deirdre Coleman is the Robert Wallace Chair of English at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of 'Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery' (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and has recently published essays in the 'Oxford History of the Novel' (Oxford University Press, 2015), the 'Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century British Women Writers' (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and 'Archives of Natural History' (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Her research interests lie in literature, colonialism, slavery and natural history.

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Smeathmania Chapter 1: Metamorphosis Chapter 2: ProspectsChapter 3: ResidenceChapter 4: Housekeeping Chapter 5: CurrencyChapter 6: DoldrumsChapter 7: AntislaveryChapter 8: Prodigal ReturnsConclusion: Legacies Appendix: Proposals for printing by subscription, Voyages and travels in Africa and the West-Indies, from the year 1771, to the year 1779 inclusive [London, 1780].‘Oeconomy of a Slave Ship’. ‘Mr Smeathman’s Useful hints for those who intend to visit or settle in Africa and other hot Climates’.‘Some Account of the Termites, which are found in Africa and other hot climates. In a Letter from Mr. Henry Smeathman, of Clement’s Inn, to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. P. R. S.’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London vol.71 (1781).BibliographyIndex

'The book will prove a valuable resource for scholars working on the history of scientific collecting in the period and the fraught relation between the network of collectors who sustained British empiricism in the eighteenth century and natural philosophers like Banks... it is especially illuminating in what it reveals about the contribution of the transatlantic slave trade to the pursuit of natural history.'Devin Griffiths, European Romantic Review