Anti-Picturesque Landscapes, Entangled Fauna, and Interracial Collaboration in Post-Emancipation Jamaica in the Work of Philip Henry Gosse and Richard Hill

Abstract

The illustrations in Philip Henry Gosse’s travelogue A Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica, published in 1851, refuse both the picturesque modes and the natural history conventions of the period. This article explores both of these surprising formal qualities in depth by comparing these illustrations to those from Gosse’s other books and to other contemporaneous representations. One explanation for these formal choices is Gosse’s unique collaboration with a Jamaican scientist and informant of mixed race, Richard Hill. Through a close reading of Gosse’s illustrations and a comparison of the texts written by Gosse and by Hill, this article proposes a methodology for exploring how diverse individuals negotiated their places within the global natural history networks of the nineteenth century.