Lunar Lecture – Romanticism, Place, Identity and the Picturesque: Erasmus Darwin’s Poetical Oaks by Professor Paul Elliott
April 8 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
£10
Erasmus Darwin and his literary and philosophical friends were inspired by trees which Darwin believed were essential for economic utility, horticultural improvement, productive estate management and ecological vitality. In his Lichfield botanical garden and other gardens, Darwin strove to unite as his friend and biographer Anna Seward claimed, practical botany with picturesque prospects by creating and experiencing planted and poetic vegetable realms. Ancient oaks demonstrated how trees flourished best, underscoring their cultural status as ‘monarchs of the forest’ in nature’s economy, encouraging Darwin to emphasise the vital, intertwined relationship between woodland and humanity and its impact upon history, culture and society.
This talk takes a close look at some of Darwin’s sylvan poems showing how and why it was venerable oaks he chose to represent his poetical passions inspired by knowledge and experience of regional woodlands. This was informed by practical botany, use of plant substances in medicine, manufactures and industry, experimental observations in gardens and orchards and analyses of vegetable physiology and anatomy.
So come and take a stroll into the woods with Darwin and his friends!
Brief Biography
Paul Elliott is a Midland historian with research interests in the history of science and medicine, landscape and environmental history, local, urban and regional history, historical geography and the history of education. His books include: The Derby Philosophers: Science and Culture in English Urban Society, 1700-1850, paperback ed., (Manchester, 2025), British Urban Trees: a Social and Cultural History c1800-1914 (Cambridge, 2016); (as co-author) The British Arboretum: Trees, Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, paperback ed., (Pittsburgh, 2019); Enlightenment, Modernity and Science: Geographies of Scientific Culture in Eighteenth Century England, paperback ed., (London, 2020); Erasmus Darwin’s Gardens: Medicine, Agriculture and the Enlightenment Sciences, paperback ed., (Woodbridge, 2025).
