IN 1887, RICHARD JEFFERIES, a popular nature essayist, added his name to the list of several dozen individuals who had written either introductions or notes to Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne (1789). Jefferies, like many who chose to edit and introduce this text throughout the Victorian period, represents White as a model figure – but a model for two quite different things. On the one hand, Jefferies commends White and his Natural History as examples of simple, reflective engagement with a local, natural economy – an approach to nature that any inquisitive and observant person could emulate. White is thus allied to fictional working-class naturalists like Job Legh in Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton and leisured clergyman like Mr. Farebrother in George Eliot's Middlemarch. All that is needed to become a student of natural history, Jefferies suggests, is curiosity and intelligence. He informs his reader that, “In the same manner [as White] any one who has a taste for out-of-door observations may study natural history without any previous scientific learning. There is not the smallest need to know the Latin names of the birds in order to watch them, or of the flowers in order to gather them” (viii). White is thus put forward as an exemplar of what anyone may aspire to be. White, Jefferies tells his readers,

But for Jefferies, White the amateur naturalist exists alongside White the scientist. While Jefferies argues that those with no scientific training can emulate White, he claims that White's example can also profit the reader whose “mind dwells on science, and the questions it has opened up of late years” (viii). White is not only a prototype for aspiring Job Leghs and Mr. Farebrothers; he is also a model for aspiring scientists like Roger Hamley in Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. Jefferies thus stands in a tradition with other Victorians who commented on The Natural History of Selborne. Jefferies, like various near-contemporaries, seems unsure what lessons he should take from White. Is White an amateur naturalist simply observing what he sees in his parish, or a practitioner of a specialized (and reliable) scientific methodology? All of White's editors see him as in one way or another exemplary, but differ on what exactly he exemplifies.

It would be possible to write a reception history of The Natural History of Selborne in many different ways – showing White's influence on school children, for example, or the ways in which The Natural History of Selborne was emblematic and exemplary for the emerging discipline of ecology and, later, environmental science and the environmental movement. Focusing, however, on White's depiction by his Victorian editors places White among his direct descendents – those who claim to be introducing White's natural-historical vision to the next generation and thereby furthering his project. By viewing The Natural History of Selborne through its Victorian editions, one can see how White became the father of a tradition – how natural historians in the generation after him sought and found an ancestor and model for themselves and their readers.

Following an overview of the distinctive features of The Natural History of Selborne as a text, this essay first examines the ways in which White's editors set up Selborne as a model place to be inhabited by White: in its perceived isolation from the pressures of modernity and in the focus it provided for White's work. Selborne is depicted as a tranquil sanctuary, facilitating White's development and work and encouraging a primarily reflective relationship with non-human nature. The essay turns next to White's image as a religious figure: how he is represented as a moral and religious model – in particular, as a practitioner of natural theology. After showing how White is represented as an ideal figure writing from an ideal place, this essay treats White's image as scientist. In this connection, one encounters significant development across the period, with the growing professionalization of scientific research and the emergence of evolutionary biology putting White's editors increasingly in the position of relating his work to a new set of assumptions about what science is and teaches.

In 1830, an anonymous reviewer for the New Monthly Magazine wrote that “the writings, and even the name of Gilbert White…have remained until lately almost unknown, save to the lovers of natural history, and to the curious few who, albeit themselves unskilled in such researches, had yet chance to make a fond acquaintance with his unobtrusive pages” (“Selborne” 564). Because at least four editions of The Natural History of Selborne had been published before 1830, the claim that White and his writings were “almost unknown” is probably hyperbolic. In fact, most scholars of the natural history movement cite William Jardine's 1827 edition of Selborne as the beginning of its publishing boom (Merrill 22). But whether its rise should be dated to 1827 or to 1830, the great popularity of The Natural History of Selborne clearly began near the beginning of the Victorian period and was sustained throughout Victoria's reign. Between 1830 and 1900, over 100 editions were published (a record comparable to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice), making it a familiar item on Victorian bookshelves. As a young woman, Charlotte Brontë included it in a catalog of books that she recommended as foundational reading in natural history alongside “Bewick, Audubon, and Goldsmith” (Barker 29). George Eliot read it along with other classics like “Boswell and the Odyssey,” (Journals 57), and Charles Darwin said that reading it as a child inspired him to begin watching birds and taking notes on their habits (Autobiography 11). By the 1850s, natural history had become a national craze, and Gilbert White's Selborne was a central text for devotees. Since the popularity of White's text predates the heyday of the natural history craze, it is plausible to suppose that it was not a passion for natural history that prompted people to read White so much as it was reading White that inspired Victorians to turn to their tide pools and microscopes.

A combination of factors enabled the sudden and sustained publishing boom of White's text. The steam-driven printing technology developed between 1810 and 1814 dramatically reduced the cost of print and, in 1836, a heavy tax on paper was lifted by the Reform parliament (D. Allen 85). It was thus possible, by the late 1830s, for much cheaper editions of White's text to make it to market, increasing the text's availability to a growing middle-class readership and putting copies in the hands of working-class naturalists.

The relative ease of publishing also made it possible for White's text to be reconceived and marketed in ways that increased demand. The 1830 reviewer for the New Monthly Magazine was looking at a “smart duodecimo” edition in “gay-green garniture” published as a volume in Constable's Miscellany, a popular series that included titles like Andrew Crichton's Converts from infidelity; or, Lives of eminent individuals who have renounced libertine principles and sceptical opinions, and embraced Christianity (1827) and Henry Glassford Bell's Selections of the most remarkable phenomena of nature (1827).

If other volumes of Constable's Miscellany tended toward the sensational, the text of The Natural History of Selborne, as the 1830 reviewer claims, is “unobtrusive” – a collection of letters from a Hampshire curate to two comparatively well-known eighteenth-century naturalists, Thomas Pennant and Daines Barington. White's original text, published under the title The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton, included a lengthy section on medieval and Roman antiquities. This section was excised in many later editions, but a number of later editors chose to include selected entries from White's journals and a “Garden Kalendar.” Beginning very early, with the edition of 1813, some editors included a sampling of White's poetry. In all the additions to and subtractions from the text (including an “arrangement for young persons”), what invariably survived was the core of White's project – the letters to Pennant and Barrington.

Although the first nine letters (written only for publication) serve as a general introduction and situate the contents within the geography, geology, and cultural history of Selborne, the rest of the volume has the meandering order of a correspondence. As in an epistolary novel, the form allows a correspondent's distinctive voice to emerge in a seemingly artless context, calling as much attention to the identity and character of the writer as to the content of the letters. An epistolary work such as The Natural History of Selborne, unlike a treatise such as Darwin's On the Origin of Species, does not, then, lend itself to the construction of an overarching, linear argument. Many letters digress into discussions of the correct Latin nomenclature for this or that species, and White skips from topic to topic as he entertains the views and questions of his correspondents.¹

A topic mentioned in one letter may not recur until several letters later, if at all. Again, however, the epistolary form focuses attention on the authorial voice. The reader is constantly reminded that these observations about non-human nature are the observations of a particular man in a particular place, the observations of Gilbert White of Selborne. As I will argue, the identity of Gilbert White, his iconic status, is the crucial factor in the Victorian reception of The Natural History of Selborne. It is significant, then, that the very form of the work draws attention to White's character.

The Natural History of Selborne, as “unobtrusive” as it appeared on the surface, clearly had the makings of a best-seller, one with broad appeal across class lines. The serious amateur naturalist could, at least initially, look to White as an authoritative reference for the latest observations within the field of natural history, while someone with little knowledge of natural history could find in The Natural History of Selborne diverting descriptions of the common objects and events that he or she might witness just outside the house. By the Victorian period, The Natural History of Selborne's standing as an authoritative reference was diminishing as White's observations were amended and supplemented by later naturalists.²

Its popularity as a foundational text in the discipline of natural history and as a literary text to be read by a general audience, however, was only increasing. White became not merely a naturalist and author, but a figure representing an idealized response to some of the most cherished (and contested) values of English life – place, nature, and God.

One of the challenges to any interpreter of The Natural History of Selborne is the relative paucity of biographical information about White. The fact that little is know about White's personal life, his feelings, character, or even his religious views means that he is available to be constructed in a variety of ways to suit the interests of later readers. In his award-winning biography, Richard Mabey sums up the nineteenth-century picture of White as follows: “a figure from a pastoral, a kind of ruminant tranquil, simple, wholesome and unworldly” (Biography 7). While this captures something of how White was represented by and to his Victorian readers, White's image in this period was more multi-faceted and complex than Mabey allows.

It is true that one of the virtues which White exemplifies for Victorians is the virtue of being at peace. For his Victorian audience, facing labor unrest, swift and pervasive ecological degradation, and religious upheaval, White represented an ideal of tranquility. But because the readership of The Natural History of Selborne was so broad, this idealized image served, simultaneously, a number of competing class interests. For the Victorian intelligentsia, the class of readers like George Eliot and Charles Darwin, White was an example of unfettered achievement – the pursuit of ideas with single-minded clarity and few distractions. For them, White was the image of the unhurried scholar. For other middle-class and even working-class readers, White was an example of attainable gentility and understanding. For such readers, his idealized image, rested on the fact that all he needed was his garden, the woods and fields surrounding Selborne, and his skills of observation. White seemed proof that a kind of leisured gentility was within these readers’ reach if they could only turn away from the bustle which surrounded them and look to their gardens. Mabey's claim, then, that White's Victorian image is simply that of a tranquil rustic, is complicated by the diversity of his readership and the kind of model White presented for different classes. Mabey is right, however, to stress the nineteenth-century conception of White as tranquil and leisured.

All of the class perspectives described above converge in their view of non-human nature. For both the Victorian intellectual and the middle-class hobbyist, non-human nature was primarily an object of contemplation. Granted, for the intellectual it was the raw material of activity – the subject of seemingly countless volumes in natural history – but the activity occurred in the realm of discourse and publishing. Late in the century, rare figures like Charles Kingsley (who was both a prolific writer and an advocate for clean water) provide counter-models to the merely contemplative naturalist.

For Victorians, the association, between White and tranquility was grounded in at least one important fact. White spent most of his life in a relatively inaccessible location. Selborne, located in Hampshire just six miles from Jane Austen's home in the village of Chawton, was no great distance from the major population centers of England. It became, nevertheless, a paradigm of sanctuary – an ideal home for an ideal figure. Although it was relatively close to London, Selborne in the eighteenth century was isolated from the surrounding English countryside by deep, sunken lanes that were difficult to navigate in good weather and impassible in bad. In the 1830 review cited earlier, the author claims that “the sequestered retreat of the naturalist still remains – thanks to the hopeless depravity of its hollow ways” (565). It was no easy matter for White to travel outside of his locality; his contacts with greater English society and intellectual culture were necessarily curtailed. He did, however, spend nine years at Oxford, first as a student and later as Proctor of Oriel College, and he made numerous excursions to other parts of England (some of which are documented in The Natural History of Selborne), including at least one trip annually to London. But the presumed isolation of Selborne, together with the idealization of White, suggested that ideal interactions with non-human nature are personal and local.

At first glance, it is curious that The Natural History of Selborne was so popular at the historical moment when natural history was turning toward the exotic and the distant. Texts like Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle (1839), Henry Walter Bates's The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1864), and Cuthbert Colingwood's Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea (1868) all catered to an increasing Victorian taste for the exotic. White's continuing popularity, alongside this increasing taste for the exotic, reflects a desire for an English methodology, an English system of observation, to take abroad. As Merrill argues, “travelers’ reports often sported all the typical characteristics of natural history discourse in high relief. The language used to describe a Brazilian jungle applied equally well, although perhaps on a less grandiose scale, to a little pond on Wimbledon Common” (55). Victorians were eager to pursue their natural-historical investigations beyond England's shores, but they wanted reassurance of the Englishness of their pursuit. Selborne, in its exportable methodology, and Selborne in its emblematic Englishness, provided just such reassurance.

White's subject, then, is not nature-as-concept, but the particular embodiment of nature in one geographical region. It was also essential to White's project of minute and sustained observation that his work be local; his premise was that comprehensive natural histories of regions can only be developed “if stationary men would pay some attention to the districts in which they reside” (3). At the same time, White's subject, unlike that of most other writers on English country life (from Jane Austen, to Mary Russell Mitford in Our Village, to William Cobbett in Rural Rides), is not anthropology. Its detachment from human society is one of the most obvious characteristics of the text. The Natural History of Selborne contains occasional references to people who assisted White with experiments, and comments on things like the lore of a local “idiot-boy” (183) fascinated with bees, but it is far less concerned with the social economy of humans than with the economy of the non-human world.³

None of the weddings, baptisms, and funerals White must have performed over his tenure as curate of Selborne merit any reference in his published work; but he spends paragraphs describing how the house-martin cares for its young. Jefferies laments this imbalance in White: “If the great observer had put down what he saw of the people of his day just as he has put down his notes of animals and birds, there would have been a book composed of extraordinary interest…. It must ever be regretted that he did not leave a natural history of the people of his day” (xi–xii). Jefferies laments the absence of anthropology in White because he would trust “the great observer” to fashion a detailed and accurate picture.

The lack of social history in White, however, may be what made his vision of rural England so appealing to Victorian readers. White modeled a way to avoid the difficult social and economic issues of rural life. The Natural History of Selborne first gained popularity in the early 1830s, just when the “Captain Swing” uprisings and hay-rick burnings of 1830 to 1831 had drawn attention to the plight of agricultural labor in southern England, the regional context of Selborne.⁴

Selborne reinforced the myth of a tranquil, peaceful, rural England at a moment when that myth was becoming decidedly strained. White allowed the Victorian reader to forget that agricultural laborers inhabited the countryside along with the swallows and sparrows.

In White's Victorian reception, we find multiple references to his isolation in Selborne. According to the first of these, White was isolated from the pressures of modern society – the gentleman naturalist being one who lives apart from the bustle of ordinary (more-or-less urban) life in a place of sanctuary. Edward Turner Bennett, who edited and supplied notes for an 1832 edition of The Natural History of Selborne, died before the edition went to press. John Joseph Bennett assumed the task of writing an introduction on behalf of his brother and describes his brother's response upon visiting Selborne:

Mental activity in an isolated rural setting thus provides the antidote to “the eager and incessant struggles of mankind.” This is essentially the same sentiment Leonard Jenyns expresses in the introduction to his 1842 edition, where he writes, “White seems to have experienced much enjoyment, apart from the bustle and turmoils of the world” (xi). In 1842, at the beginning of the “hungry forties” when railroads were just beginning to “bustle” and labor unrest was indeed causing “turmoil,” Jenyns points to White as someone who was able to escape (either by historical accident or deliberate choice) the noise and strife afflicting many Victorians.

The idea of the amateur naturalist's occupation as an escape from the pressures of modernity is not confined to the early Victorian period; one can find expressions of it throughout the nineteenth century. In 1900, Grant Allen writes,

Allen is both reflecting on the technological changes of the nineteenth century (there were no trains and telegrams to worry White) and praising the life that White could live without these pressures. Allen, a naturalist of some standing as well as a prolific novelist (a recent biography of Allen is titled, The busiest man in England), experienced the stress of trying to make a serious contribution to Victorian ideas while supporting himself by trade.⁵ For Allen, the goal of being a “comparatively unoccupied gentleman” was farther out of reach than it was for Bennett and Jenyns.⁶ Allen laments, “These times have passed away,” and adds, “But the calm picture of this more peaceful and easy-going past is all the more pleasant to us on that account” (G. Allen xxxiii). By the end of the nineteenth century, the escape from modernity represented by White's work was understood as merely literary – an escape through encounter with the text, not a literal escape by living as White did. Yet even Allen understands prolonged and intimate encounter with non-human nature to imply isolation from the characteristic pressures of modern life; isolation is simply achieved by different means and to a different extent.

The second version of White's isolation put forward by his Victorian editors is the isolation of a meek and humble genius, unrecognized and unappreciated by those who surround him. A frequently cited anecdote in introductions to The Natural History of Selborne concerns an occasion when a visitor to Selborne questioned the locals about White, and “all an old dame, who had nursed several of the family, could tell [him] of the philosophical bachelor was, that ‘he was a still, quiet body,’ and that ‘there wasn't a bit of harm in him, I’ll assure ye, sir: there wasn't indeed’” (Brown iv). Here the implication is that the study of nature not only places one in (or requires that one occupy) a sanctuary from the pressures of modern life. It isolates one from those nearest oneself. The Reverend J. G. Wood develops an extended analogy to illustrate the point in his 1853 edition:⁷

Even though White's “genius” is directed toward the most local inquiries, locals understood him least of all. Of all White's Victorian editors, Wood has the most condescending attitude toward White's fellow residents of Selborne. White's obscurity among his neighbors, however, is a staple of most biographies, and most accounts of Victorian visits to Selborne remark on the fact that White's grave is without monument. Although Jefferies asserts that the study of nature requires no particular knowledge and certainly not knowledge of Latin, the supposition of many of White's Victorian editors is that the kind of understanding White achieved isolated him from the rustic natives of Selborne. Most of White's Victorian editors assume that, although the study of nature does not require specific training, it is a form of cultivation – elevating the student of nature above his or her peers.

A final version of White's isolation rests not on the attributes of the setting that he inhabited, but on choices he made within it. White spent forty years making nearly daily entries concerning only a few square miles of territory. While his interests were broad (he corresponded with his brother John concerning the natural history of Gibraltar and was curious about species that lived only in other regions), the primary focus of his own research was always his Selborne environs. Christopher Davies notes this in his 1879 edition, but disclaims that Selborne had any special attributes contributing to White's genius. For Davies, White's method, not Selborne itself, deserves the credit for his achievement: “The village of Selborne presents no more special features of interest nor greater facilities for the study of Natural History than hundreds of other [sic] of our charming English villages; and it is the patient and close observation by one man of the natural world around him which has given it a name above its fellows” (x). Jefferies makes a similar claim but puts the point to his readers as instruction on how to pursue White's project: “Be very careful not to go too far; keep round the skirts of home near the garden, or in the nearest field, else you will jump over the very best; for it is a fact that the greatest variety of information is generally gathered in a very small compass…. At least, do not go out of your own locality much for some time” (xi). Under this model, the appropriate understanding of nature is detailed and narrow – restricting oneself to a small plot, to a small range of phenomena, is part of the ideal method of natural-historical research.

Alongside the isolation and tranquility of his life in Selborne, the other crucial biographical fact about White for his Victorian editors was that he was a curate in the Church of England. To many of them, the fact that religious language is used only in passing in the text of The Natural History of Selborne was of little importance. Because of his relationship to the Church, White was a religious figure, and so for his Victorian editors his writings were to be interpreted in religious terms.

White's own statement of the religious significance of his project comes in his brief “advertisement” to the first edition:

This is not, however, White's sole stated purpose, and he follows it with two more justifications for his project (“enlargement of the boundaries of historical and topographical knowledge” and “throw[ing] some small light upon ancient customs and manners”). With such a brief reference to “Creation” grouped with two other, secular justifications for his project, a contemporary critic might be tempted to dismiss the significance of White's religious training and vocation altogether. In the context of eighteenth-century religious discourse, however, White's phrase, “wonders of the Creation” alludes to the discipline of natural theology, which came to prominence in the eighteenth century. White's association with natural theology was highly significant to his Victorian editors who read him in and against an era when the connection between religion and the natural world was being fiercely contested.

White's clearest link to eighteenth-century natural theology lies in his references throughout The Natural History of Selborne to the work of John Ray (1627–1705). Ray, along with William Derham (1657–1735), was the originator of the idea of “physico-theology,” the idea that the attributes of God could be perceived by the study of physical reality. Ray's most popular work, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691), based on a series of sermons he preached at Cambridge, is an exploration of the intricate design of the world as a manifestation of the creative plan of God. As Mabey points out, it is easy to make fun of physico-theologians for such claims as that there is just the right amount of gold and silver in the earth's crust to regulate human trade or that humans were made just the right height to be able to ride horses (Biography 11). John Ray's theology, however, was what prompted him to investigate the physical world and directed him toward avenues of study that led to or anticipated later scientific work. As member of the Royal Society of London, Ray's contributions to science included a “natural system” of classification, similar to Linnaeus's but based on plant morphology, a system which was eventually to supplant the Linnaean. Ray was also fascinated with adaptation, seeing it as evidence of God's designing hand. Although the scientific establishment would eventually reject a theological basis for biology, Ray's religious beliefs lay behind much of his groundbreaking work. As this essay will show, a number of White's editors see White as a figure akin to Ray – a scientist whose work is driven by theological commitments and imbued with theological implications.

Despite Ray's clear influence on White, it is hard to determine how the latter's theology influenced White's work in natural history. White frequently refers to Ray, but never with respect to Ray's theological views – rather he uses Ray as an authoritative reference for the identification and classification of species. White's first reference to Ray comes in a letter to Thomas Pennant (letter X in the series), where White points out that “The stoparola of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called, in your Zoology, the fly-catcher” (32). Other references to Ray are similarly non-theological in character.

White's theology does surface from time to time. He sees providential design as Ray did, particularly in species’ adaptive features. Concerning frogs, White proclaims, “How wonderful is the oeconomy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no legs: as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land” (50). On birds in general, White remarks that, “It is curious to observe with what different degrees of architectonic skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus, and so nearly correspondent in their general mode of life!” (163). And on the choice of suitable nests and adoptive parents on the part of the cuckoo, White declares, “this would be adding wonder to wonder, and instancing in a fresh manner that the methods of Providence are not subjected to any mode or rule, but astonish us in new lights, and in various and changeable appearances” (120). White also considers some natural facts an indication of Providential care for humans: “Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms” (51).

His occasional references to Providence and his familiarity with the works of John Ray and William Denham clearly mark White as part of the eighteenth-century British religious tradition. But although White's theology may influence his choice of topics and, in some measure, the way he approaches them, it would be strained to characterize White's “parochial history” as deeply or self-consciously theological. Nevertheless, White's position as a representative of the religious establishment was extremely important to many of his Victorian editors as they presented him to readers as a model for interaction with the non-human world. Their response to his religious position can be separated, roughly, into two different but interwoven strands. First, White's position as a churchman was taken as a sign of his moral virtue; he was held up as a comprehensively exemplary character. Thus White was idealized not only for how he was situated within and observed the non-human world, but also for his moral character. Second, White's religiously inflected work was construed as a corrective to the decline of natural theology in the late nineteenth century.

Victorian editors represented a wide spectrum of religious doctrines not just those of the established church. As David Allen points out, the natural history movement in Victorian England, with its emphases on useful knowledge and material prosperity, had strong ties to Evangelicalism: “The moral and the useful became, increasingly, intertwined: pursuits like geology could be justified, in the self-same flickering of conscience, as a means of revering the earthly grandeurs of Creation – the Natural Theology as re-enunciated by Paley and now taken up in a ceaseless chant in every preface – and as a means of prospering materially” (65).

One of the most remarkable editions of The Natural History of Selborne was published in 1833 with an introduction by Lady Georgiana Dover in the form of a letter “To my dear little boy.” This edition, which went through a number of printings by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, is “arranged for young persons.” The “arrangement” involves a general abridgement, and the bowdlerization of passages about the sexual lives of animals. White's description of how “swifts tread, or copulate, on the wing” (167) and his mention of how worms are “hermaphrodites, and much addicted to venery, and consequently very prolific” (197) are both omitted. Dover's justification for “arranging” this edition for her “dear little boy,” is her hope that it will be influential in forming his habits, his religious character in particular: “If this book should give you a taste for Natural History and Country Pursuits, I shall feel great pleasure; and if further, it should lead you from the study of Nature to that of Nature's God, it will have gratified the most anxious wish of Your affectionate Mother” (Dover vi). An understanding of nature, for Dover, is clearly connected to an understanding of God. Thus, White's text can be expected to be indirectly formative of a child's religious beliefs, no matter how infrequently White refers even to providence, let alone a specific deity. Leonard Jenyns (incidentally, one of the men who declined the berth on the H.M.S. Beagle eventually filled by the young Charles Darwin) also recommends The Natural History of Selborne as a moral and religious guide for children: “[White's] work shows traces of a cheerful and benevolent disposition; and, what is more, of a heart led and habituated by such studies to contemplative meditation on the wisdom and bounty of Providence. It is on this account, that it particularly deserves to be placed in the hands of young persons” (xi).

In his 1853 edition, Sir William Jardine emphasizes the merely moral rather than the religious influence of White's work.⁸

Explaining his agreement to put out yet another edition of such a popular book, he cites its benefits to children and adults, “The wish to extend among a new generation of readers the knowledge of a book which, in the opinion of every one, is well fitted for the perusal of young persons, and is a valuable record and example how the leisure hours of a country clergyman may be profitably and innocently employed, induced me to comply” (Jardine v). This example exhibits how White's supposed moral and religious qualities were thought to make The Natural History of Selborne appropriate reading for English youth in the cultivation of their “leisure hours.” Jardine sees in White's approach to non-human nature a disposition he wants to instill in England's young persons – a disposition toward “profitable employment.” The recommendation is thus both Evangelical and Liberal in character; it has more to do with useful work and self-improving activity than with any specific attitude toward the subject of study.

When this disposition toward “profitable employment” is defined in terms of a response to the subject of study, it is a matter of certain investigative habits and an affective disposition toward non-human nature. Hugh Reginald Haweis expresses it well in his 1886 edition: “The birds in the branches are our teachers – the grasshopper, the butterfly, the ant, are full of sweet parables – the ways of the beasts and feathered fowls and fishes become exciting and entertaining beyond measure, when examined with care and recorded with sympathy” (5). The moral guidance on offer from nature is available only to those with the correct method (careful observation) and the right attitude (sympathy).

The second major way in which White's (real or supposed) religious commitments are exploited by his Victorian editors is as a foil to the nineteenth-century turn from natural theology. During the 1830s and 1840s, all references to White as a religious figure concern his overall character. By 1853, however, several editors had made explicit connections between White's religion and his scientific practice. In the Reverend J. G. Wood's edition of that year, Wood writes, “It is the Editor's sincere wish that the perusal of this volume may awaken in some minds the love of that science, which, by the constant contemplation of God's works in their wisdom, strength, or beauty, lead the mind so forcibly to their Maker” (vi). This is an explicit endorsement of natural theology and its foundational thesis — that scientific research reveals the existence and attributes of God. Earlier editors may have assumed that this is how their readers would understand White's project. By Wood's edition of 1853, however, there had been significant scholarly discussion of evolutionary ideas.⁹

Most importantly in terms of cultural influence, Robert Chambers's less scholarly Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (published anonymously in 1844) had reached a wide audience with its argument that individual species were not created separately by God but developed according to general laws.¹⁰ The historian Josef Altholz describes Chambers as a “sort of Darwin without discipline” (66) and asserts that it was “received…with a storm of theological criticism which anticipated the more famous debate later excited by Darwin” (66–67). Although Wood's edition pre-dates the publication of The Origin of Species, with Chambers, debate over evolution was underway. Wood felt the need to affirm that what White was doing in Selborne was natural theology, grounded in a religious tradition that understood God as the source and regulator of all the objects of natural science.

William Jardine's 1853 edition is even more direct than Wood's in contrasting White's work with another, undesirable kind of science. Perceiving that the tide of science was shifting away from natural theology – away from seeing natural phenomena as a result of divine design – Jardine offers this counsel to the natural historians of his day:

In a bid to preserve a religious foundation for scientific pursuits, Jardine insists on belief in a single creator (“one hand only”) and providential guidance (“the same power regulates”) as foundational for proper natural-historical research.

Jardine's instructions have as much import for the methodology of natural history, as for its theology. They implicitly critique a natural history that is speculative, not based on proven facts; Jardine sees White's method as a corrective. Jardine asks why The Natural History of Selborne is so popular and answers: “Just that it is the simple recording of valuable facts as they were really seen or learned, without embellishment except as received from truth, and without allowing the imagination to ramble and assume conclusions the exactness of which it had not proved.” Jardine is not explicit about what kind of natural history embellishes the truth or allows the imagination to ramble but it is clear that it is one loosed from religious moorings: “[White] at the same time kept steadily in view the moral obligation upon himself as a man and minister, to benefit his fellow creatures by impressing upon them the beneficence of the creator, as exemplified in his works, and the contentment and cheerfulness of spirit which their study under proper restrictions imparts to the mind” (Jardine, 1853 vi–vii). White's scientific pursuits are supposed to be directly motivated by his religious obligations; White's influence on his readers is supposed to be religious as well.

The distinction between a science that is appropriately linked to theology and science that is not was only an undercurrent in editions of the 1850s. Three decades later, with Darwinian science well established, the critique of irreligious science became much more strident. In 1880, Frank Buckland depicts The Natural History of Selborne as a countervailing force against the evils of his age.¹¹

He accepts the task of editing an edition: White is no longer merely an exemplar of religious virtues that his readers share or ought to share, but a prophetic voice, helping to “counteract” nineteenth-century secularization. By the 1880s, White's status as a religious figure had been elaborated to the point that his text, with little overtly religious content, could be presented as an antidote to infidelity.

White was constructed by his Victorian editors, however, not only as an isolated English clergyman, but also as a man of science. He was presented as a moral and religious exemplar to a wide Victorian audience, including laborers, children, and natural-history enthusiasts of all classes. But White's editors also presented him as a model for a narrower group of readers — those with a direct, professional stake in scientific discovery and debate. White's identity as a scientific naturalist and proto-ecologist had less of an effect on his popular image than did his identity as an isolated clergyman, but it was important to the formation of his image within the Victorian intellectual class. And the major question for those depicting White as a scientist was whether he represented one link in a continuous chain of progress leading up to and beyond mid-nineteenth-century science, or whether he represented an ideal past, an older methodology that had been lately corrupted but which Victorian scientists would do well to emulate.

In 1832, J. Rennie notes the increasing popularity of natural history and correctly predicted that The Natural History of Selborne would become an important model in the field: “Instead, also, of its having lost in value, from the progress of science, the reputation of the work has recently increased, in consequence of the public taste having been more directed than formerly to the subjects which it embraces” (xi). While Rennie connects White's importance to the content of the text, later editors see White's methods as more important than his precise interests. In Jardine's 1853 edition, Jardine writes: “Since the time of the letters from Selborne vast advances have been made in all branches of science. White was one of those who mainly assisted or tempted persons to observe. Studying, searching out, and inquiring himself, he incited others” (1853, xi). As science advanced, White's technique of close observation survived.

An 1862 editor was more specific about how White's techniques transformed scientific practice: “His humble and honourable career suggested a new path for research which was within the reach of thousands…. His example helped to substitute for the old ‘Book Naturalists,’ who had been the laureates of science from the days of Pliny, a race of observers who only recorded what they had seen for themselves” (Bell and Daldy vi). This editor regards White as a different kind of scientist from those who preceded him. Instead of simply classifying, based on book-knowledge, White went out to observe non-human nature and recorded what he had seen for himself. This appreciation for White's method of field observation coincided with a historical moment at which realism – in both the literary and visual arts – was highly valued. This was the era of both the realistic novel and of a photographic realism in the visual arts. White, like a realistic novelist depicting scenes of ordinary life or a plein air painter going out to record nature in minute detail under natural light, was one who carefully recorded the world as it actually is – not as it might be under less “natural” conditions.

But White's methods were not valued only for their associations with various forms of artistic realism. The biggest theoretical advances in Victorian science, such as the development of evolutionary theory, were achieved through field research of the kind White pioneered. This perspective, according to which White moved within a trajectory that eventually passed through evolutionary theory, can be found throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Many historians of science see White as a pivotal figure in the development of what became the science of ecology. Donald Worster asserts that The Natural History of Selborne was “one point of origin, representative if not seminal, for the modern study of ecology” (5) and argues that “White grasped the complex unity in diversity that made of the Selborne environs an ecological whole” (7). In 1900, Grant Allen, himself a writer on evolutionary science and a biographer of Darwin with over a hundred years’ distance from The Natural History of Selborne, still classified it as one of the most important scientific works of the previous two centuries:¹²

By 1900, some of White's editors were claiming for him, not simply an important substantive contribution to eighteenth-century science, but a revolutionary role in defining a new approach to scientific research. White's attention to “infinitesimal factors” laid the foundation for the advances of modern biology and geology.

While editors like Grant Allen were placing White within or at the beginning of an uninterrupted forward trajectory, declaring him the intellectual father of Lyell and Darwin, others, like Jefferies, sought to set White apart from nineteenth-century science. Victorian editions of The Natural History of Selborne reveal cultural tensions over scientific specialization and whether serious study of the non-human world remained open to people of all classes and levels of education or was reserved, instead, for the trained scientist. Such tensions are evident in Jefferies's claim about the “spiders’ webs that have been so industriously spun over the eyesight of those who would like to think for themselves” (ix) immediately following his observation that White was not “full of evolution” when he went out to observe the non-human world. Jefferies does not wholly reject Darwinian theory as others among White's editors did, but he sees it as having completely supplanted an older way of looking at the world – a way that is still valuable, especially for the non-specialist. Jefferies prizes White's legacy of encouraging all people, regardless of training, to become more aware of the non-human world. Jefferies himself did little reading in natural history. He did not even encounter White's work until shortly before his death. But in collections of his own essays like Nature Near London, he argues that anyone, even a city dweller, could have the kind of rich, edifying encounter with the non-human world that White had had. This issue of concentrated specialization troubled other editors, too. Allen writes that: “Science has become a matter of special education…. No man now can hope to attain to new facts or generalizations without the copious aid of libraries, instruments, collections, co-operation, long specialist training” (G. Allen xxxiii). At the end of the Victorian period, Allen praises White for his groundbreaking contributions to modern science, but contends that White is no longer a suitable model for the successful scientist.

For one of Allen's contemporaries, however, this question remained open to debate. In 1896, Edward Morse wrote an introduction calling for a return to the methods and concerns of eighteenth-century science: “Any effort to revive the pre-Darwinian spirit of the study of nature is to be commended, and the republication of White's Natural History of Selborne as an aid to this awakening will be one of the strongest helps. The younger students engaged in section cutting, the tracing of cell lineage and the like, have never known the simple charms of collecting and observing the habits and behaviors of animals” (iii). The phrase “simple charms of collecting” may suggest a pursuit of hobbyists, but it is clear from the sentence that follows that Morse has in mind professional scientists: “Their only knowledge of animals oftentimes comes to them in the laboratory and the creatures hardened in alcohol or with tissue topographically mapped out with staining fluid, give little indication of their appearance in life” (iii). Ironically, Morse associates the view of science most often attributed to figures preceding White (observation as dissection and classification instead of observation as an encounter with living specimens in their natural contexts) with Darwinian science. Setting aside the issue of whether Darwinian scientists were field researchers, Morse clearly privileges field research over laboratory research and sees White's work as a corrective to an excessive concentration on the latter.

Both Allen and Morse lament the decline of the gentleman amateur naturalist, and the concomitant fact that the study of non-human nature is no longer open to anyone with a keen eye and ample leisure time. If Allen identifies the trouble as the specialization of science, while Morse blames the Darwinians, Allen conjectures that insofar as White is a scientist, he can no longer be a model for people's everyday interactions with the non-human world. Allen assumes that the ordinary leisured person cannot aspire to produce a groundbreaking scientific text; he or she is only a hobbyist, observing non-human nature for personal edification alone. Morse, on the other hand, presents White as a model for a return to another kind of science – still the science of the gentleman amateur, but a gentleman amateur who is intimately and actively engaged with his object of study.

By the end of the nineteenth century, White's identity was held up as an ideal, not of a dominant scientific paradigm, but of a methodology. The context for this was a culture under threat. The leisured gentleman-naturalists were being gradually replaced by a professionalized scientific community that would, by the middle of the twentieth century, banish natural history to the realm of hobbyists and dabblers.¹³

Overall, White's Victorian editors understood implicitly that their rural clergyman stood at the intersection of some of the most contested ideals of their time: religion, science, scholarship, contemplation, Englishness, even the relationship of humans to the non-human world. These intersections made possible the popularity and longevity of his unobtrusive set of epistolary notes. Indeed, the text's very unobtrusiveness made it especially available for appropriation by adherents of these varied ideals. Here was a text to uphold or stand against the tenets of Darwinism, one that could even be offered to children as a school-prize. Here was a work of path-breaking science written in graceful prose – a book to be packed alongside the latest novel on a seaside vacation. And here was a character, both innocent and wise, both leisured and mentally active, who could stand as an example for all.

History has recorded Gilbert White, curate of Selborne parish, as an eighteenth-century character and his life work, The Natural History of Selborne as an eighteenth-century text. But given the popularity of this text within the nineteenth century and the work White's editors undertook in projecting his image for their time, one could equally well characterize The Natural History of Selborne as Victorian text, and its author a Victorian figure.