Alexander von Humboldt, sometimes called 'the last man who knew everything', was an extraordinary polymath of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1798 he received unprecedented permission from the Spanish Crown to explore its American and Caribbean colonies, which he did from 1799-1804. This is the journal of those explorations, in which he extensively covers the region's topography, geology, fauna and flora, anthropology and comparative linguistics. Volume III sees him recording more information on Venezuela, visiting Cuba where he also writes about local politics and speaks out...

While the influence of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) looms large over the natural sciences, his legacy reaches far beyond the field notebooks of naturalists. Humboldt's 1799-1804 research expedition to Central and South America with botanist Aime Bonpland not only set the course for the great scientific surveys of the nineteenth century, but also served as the raw material for his many volumes--works of both scientific rigor and aesthetic beauty that inspired such essayists and artists as Emerson, Goethe, Thoreau, Poe, and Frederic Edwin Church.

Views of Nature, or...

The acclaimed Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was referred to by Charles Darwin as 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. Several of his works were in the library aboard the Beagle, including the multi-volume Personal Narrative of Travels, two books on geology and Tableaux de la nature (all reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). Darwin's copy of this two-volume 1811 New York edition of Humboldt's Political Essay (originally published in French earlier that year) is inscribed 'Buenos Ayres', suggesting he acquired it there in 1832-3, without its...

The acclaimed Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was referred to by Charles Darwin as 'the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived'. Several of his works were in the library aboard the Beagle, including the multi-volume Personal Narrative of Travels, two books on geology and Tableaux de la nature (all reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). Darwin's copy of this two-volume 1811 New York edition of Humboldt's Political Essay (originally published in French earlier that year) is inscribed 'Buenos Ayres', suggesting he acquired it there in 1832-3, without its...