Envisioning the Tropics: Joseph Hooker in India and the Himalayas, 1848–1850
Envisioning the Tropics: Joseph Hooker in India and the Himalayas, 1848–1850
This chapter discusses Joseph Hooker's journey to India in 1848 and the extent to which it was initially inspired and subsequently described in terms of a conventional repertoire of tropical views. Hooker's prior apprenticeship as a naturalist and, especially, his experience of life at sea were instrumental in shaping his vision of the Indian landscape. His expectations of tropical scenery had a variety of literary and scientific sources, though his actual experience of travel through India often resulted in expressions of disappointment. The Himalayan foothills, with their combination of tropical and temperate flora, brought forth a variety of more Humboldtian associations. For Hooker, tropicality was something to be written about as much as measured or mapped, and his Himalayan Journals, reflected the aesthetic as well as the scientific impulses within Victorian natural history.
Keywords: tropics, naturalist, landscape, literary, flora, aesthetic, scientific
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.