Not only is it important to build up an understanding of each unique genus and species, their appearance, habitat and breeding patterns, but historically illustrations have also played a very important part in the development of nature publishing, allowing the illiterate to follow and study the world around them.
Though met with mixed responses from scientists and naturalists across the centuries, believing the world around them was to be purely 'known' and not read, books on natural history have also come to incite passion and excitement in so many of its readers. To have the world around us neatly categorized and named has, to an extent, made it a less daunting place to live.
In the latest book from the much-loved New Naturalist series, Dr. David Allen explores the world of nature publishing through the course of history, from its very early days in the dawn of publishing, through various significant new discoveries and into the birth of New Naturalist publishing itself. Natural History is an area that is constantly developing and improving as our own understanding of the world develops, and as this book explores, publishing is always standing by to record and present this to the wider world.
