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About this site

Joseph Dalton Hooker was arguably the most important British botanist of the nineteenth century. A traveller and plant-collector, he was one of Charles Darwin’s closest friends and eventually became director of Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The image on the left is believed to be the last photograph ever taken of Sir J.D. Hooker, June 3rd 1911. (© The Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.).

These pages are intended to provide some basic information about Joseph Hooker. They include:

• November 2012: Jim Endersby will be in New Zealand talking about Hooker, on Novermber 27th (Auckland) and 29th (Dunedin). You can hear an interview with Jim Endersby on NZ radio here.
• May 2012: there's an interview with this site's author, Jim Endersby, about his book Imperial Nature on the New Books Network site.
• 2011 marks the centenary of Hooker's death; a special event was organised at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. A special edition of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society that celebrates Hooker's life is now freely available online.
• You can hear (and even see) the site's author, Jim Endersby, talking about Hooker at the Royal Society, via a free podcast on iTunes.
• Jim Endersby's book Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian Natural History, is now out in paperback from the University of Chicago press.
• more detailed biographical notes, including details of Hooker’s immediate family.
• Information about Hooker’s collectors and correspondents in Australia and New Zealand,
• A selection of Hooker’s writings.
• links to web resources that contain information about Hooker, the history of botany in general and the history of natural history more generally
• A guide to some of the archival sources concerning Hooker, including an online catalogue of Kew’s Hooker papers.
• A guide to published sources about Hooker.
• You can search this site.
• If you would like to know about Jim Endersby, who runs this site, click here for a link to my website.

This site is no longer being updated regularly.

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