Only the Amblyrhynchus”: Maria Graham’s Scientific Editing of Voyage of HMS Blonde (1826/27)

摘要

Recent research has begun to reassess women's role, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as translators of scientific texts (see: Martin). Less attention has been paid, however, to another ostensibly "background" task they sometimes performed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century science, that of editor. Like translation, editorial work has traditionally been seen as a minor, somewhat inconsequential aspect of the production of scientific knowledge. It was of course precisely this subordinate status which legitimised women's work in these roles, providing a culturally acceptable route to a public, and possibly professional, participation in science and print culture in an era when both spheres were strongly marked as masculine domains. Yet, as scholars are increasingly recognising, this dismissive attitude does not always accurately reflect the scientific acumen of the women who undertook these tasks, and the agency they were frequently able (or required) to exercise. Translators like émilie du Chatelet and Mary Somerville – whose renderings of Newton and Laplace incorporated extensive elucidation of the difficult subject matter – are arguably not only facilitators of wider intellectual debate but also participants in that debate, helping to produce as well as mediate knowledge. One can make a similar case for the agency involved in the skilful editing of scientific papers. However, women's activities in this regard remain under-researched, with the result that we have only a hazy idea of how many undertook such work across the period.