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During his five years in the 1730s as rector of St John's parish on the Caribbean island of Nevis, William Smith collected a number of remarkable seashells, which he presented to the Woodwardian Museum of Fossils at the University of Cambridge nine years after his return to England. When the incumbent Woodwardian Professor, Charles Mason, asked Smith for 'some account' of the Nevis shells, Smith wrote him a series of eleven undated letters, published as this book in 1745, containing observations on the island's flora and fauna, and details relating to the neighbouring islands. Mason and Smith became friends, and the content of the letters gradually diverged from pure recollection to larger digressions on subjects as varied as cryptography, diseases common to slaves, tarantulas, and the Great Wall of China. The result is an idiosyncratic snapshot of the mind of an educated and slightly eccentric cleric in eighteenth-century England.

Natural history --- Smith, William, --- Mason, Charles --- History, Natural --- Natural science --- Physiophilosophy --- Biology --- Science --- Smith,

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Thomas Pynchon's 1997 novel 'Mason & Dixon' marked a deep shift in Pynchon's career and in American letters in general. All of Pynchon's novels had been socially and politically aware, marked by social criticism and a profound questioning of American values. They have carried the labels of satire and black humor, and 'Pynchonesque' has come to be associated with erudition, a playful style, anachronisms and puns - and an interest in scientific theories, popular culture, paranoia, and the 'military-industrial complex.' In short, Pynchon's novels were the sine qua non of postmodernism; 'Mason & Dixon' went further, using the same style, wit, and erudition to re-create an 18th century when 'America' was being formed as both place and idea. Pynchon's focus on the creation of the Mason-Dixon Line and the governmental and scientific entities responsible for it makes a clearer statement than any of his previous novels about the slavery and imperialism at the heart of the Enlightenment, as he levels a dark and hilarious critique at this America. This volume of new essays studies the interface between 18th- and 20th-century culture both in Pynchon's novel and in the historical past. It offers fresh thinking about Pynchon's work, as the contributors take up the linkages between the 18th and 20th centuries in studies that are as concerned with culture as with the literary text itself. Contributors: Mitchum Huehls, Brian Thill, Colin Clarke, Pedro Garcia-Caro, Dennis Lensing, Justin M. Scott Coe, Ian Copestake, Frank Palmeri. Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds is Professor and Chair of the English Department at SUNY Brockport.

Frontier and pioneer life in literature --- Landontginners en pioniersleven in de literatuur --- Scientists in literature --- Vie des défricheurs et des pionniers dans la littérature --- Pynchon, Thomas --- Postmodernism (Literature) --- United States --- Literature and history --- Biographical fiction [American ] --- History and criticism --- Mason, Charles --- In literature --- Dixon, Jeremiah --- Biographical fiction, American --- Frontier and pioneer life in literature. --- Scientists in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Pynchon, Thomas. --- Mason, Charles, --- In literature. --- American biographical fiction --- American fiction --- 18th Century. --- America. --- Culture. --- Enlightenment Critique. --- Enlightenment. --- Imperialism. --- Literary Text. --- Mason & Dixon. --- Pynchon. --- Slavery.