Ayesha Mukherjee.Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England.

Abstract

In this, her first book, Ayesha Mukherjee addresses the cultural centrality of dearth, or rather the fear of it, in 1590s England—a subject that might at first glance appear narrow, but actually opens up deep questions about how early modern English men and women understood and responded to the social, economic, and environmental changes they were experiencing. At the heart of the study is the intriguing character of Sir Hugh Platt, polymathic author and experimenter who recently appeared in Deborah E. Harkness’s The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (2007), the title of which Harkness borrowed from Platt’s own central publication. Whereas Harkness depicted Platt’s London as the crucible of the scientific revolution in England, Mukherjee emphasizes its vulnerability, particularly in the dismal 1590s, when dearth was a pressing fear. To Mukherjee, this was the overriding concern that united Platt’s eclectic interests—ranging from medicine, food preservation, and manuring to cookery, limning, and pencil making—although this “dearth science” (as Mukherjee labels it) was much more than the obsession of an eccentric individual. Son of one of London’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, Platt enjoyed strong connections with London’s artisans, as well as the rich gentry, and his shop (the original “Jewel House”) was at the center of networks that extended throughout the city and beyond. From this vantage point Platt was able to compile information on a breathtaking range of innovative techniques—twenty-five recipes for black ink, to take one example cited from his manuscripts—that he would then absorb into his own experimental practices, publish, or simply make available for sale.