Jane Gray’s Framing of Asa Gray through Autobiography, Biography, and Correspondence

Abstract

Jane Loring Gray, wife of celebrated and renowned Harvard botanist Asa Gray, helped to build up the work and the posthumous reputation of her husband as a leading scientist, an advocate of Charles Darwin, and a popular proponent of science in the nineteenth-century United States. Jane left Asa the scientist for others and wanted to create a portrait of Asa the person. This article discusses the Grays’ partnership in science, places that relationship in context, and stresses the contribution Jane made to Asa’s legacy, including the way she framed her husband’s work and reputation after his death. The emphasis is on the literary, historical, cultural, biographical, and autobiographical dimensions of the Grays’ work, on the implications that work has for botany and science, and on the challenges that Jane Gray had owing to her gender, to family and social roles, and in the face of delicate health.