Thomas Penny and the preservation of Conrad Gessner’s botanical legacy

Abstract

Abstract The literary legacy of Thomas Penny (c.1532–c.1588) is revealing about the nature of collecting and collections, in that he was lucky enough to find followers (Thomas Muffet and Theodore Mayerne) who mined his entomological research and bundled it into a book. On the other hand, it was unfortunate that nothing of the sort happened to the extensive notes he made during botanical excursions in Switzerland and France with the aim of completing Conrad Gessner’s unfinished ‘Historia plantarum’ of 1565. While we have the benefit of the ‘Insectorum, sive, Minimorum animalium theatrum’ (1634) – a semi-authentic work on insects, on which Penny’s reputation has exclusively rested – yet owing to his failure ultimately to publish either Gessner’s or his own botanical legacy, this aspect of his work has remained little known. Fortunately, much of his preparatory material survives so that we have the authentic, original documents to hand, which remain to be explored. This paper offers an initial contribution to that task by presenting an evaluation of Penny’s botanical notes and by providing his extant letters (as supplementary material) for the first time, both in transcription and in translation, showing Penny as a keen observer of nature amid the political turmoil of his time.