In 1773, William Bartram embarked for the "Southern frontier" of the colonies, spending years traveling from "Georgia to the Mississippi River; from the headwaters of the St. Johns River to the heights of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains." He captured what he saw in his 1791 tome, known colloquially as Travels. In 1934, that work inspired artist and letterpress printer William G. Haynes Jr. to paint a series of watercolors. That collection of art depicting the flora, fauna, and landscapes of the South sits alongside excerpts from Bartram's volume in Bartram's Travels Illustrated, edited by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer and Harriet H. Langford.
Dallmeyer celebrates the lasting legacy of Bartram's work, which offers readers insights into the landscapes he encountered and acts as a testament to "how science can be interspersed with poetry." Dallmeyer's annotations further enhance the conversation between Haynes's watercolors and Bartram's narrative descriptions. Bartram's Travels Illustrated is a treasure of natural history, Southern place-making, and the ways in which art and science intersect across U.S. history, from its earliest days as a country to modern times. --Kerry McHugh, Textus Collective