"From the Cabinets of mere vertuosi into the busy world": Thomas Pennant's Natural Philosophical Networks and the Creation of British Zoology, 1752–1766.

The essay investigates the work of the Welsh natural historian Thomas Pennant from 1752 up to his 1765 tour of Continental Europe and the completed publication of his first major scientific work, British Zoology , a year later. It focuses thereby on a time when Pennant actively sought correspondences with naturalists within Britain and abroad and created an extensive network that included figures such as Benjamin Stillingfleet, Emanuel Mendes da Costa, and Carl Linnaeus. Working with rich metadata drawn from Pennant's correspondence, the essay seeks to gain a deeper understanding of how the epistolary medium fed into his scientific oeuvre and contributed to establishing his name on the Continent as a British virtuoso of the highest rank. Light is thrown on the etiquette and practicalities of specimen exchange against the backdrop of European wars, the roles played by British and European learned societies, and the importance of book exchange, including the effort to expand the boundaries of knowledge through the acquisition of new publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]