The Fertile Banks of the Thames

摘要

The modern image of Elizabethan London evokes a shadowy haunt of swashbuckling courtiers and starchy black-clad Puritans. It does not conjure, for most, gentlemen comparing exotic floral specimens received from friends in Holland or aldermen crowding into public spaces to hear lectures on navigational and surveying instruments. Deborah Harkness's engaging The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution makes clear that in Elizabeth's London there lurked a vibrant, sizable (if loose-knit) community of enthusiastic interrogators and manipulators of the natural world.