From Grub Street to the Colony: George William Francis and an early Victorian scientific career

Abstract

This article focuses on the early scientific career of George William Francis (1800–1865), a London-born botanist who later emigrated to Australia and founded the Adelaide Botanic Garden. Most scholarly works about Francis emphasize his botanical contributions or life in Australia, yet overlook his career before middle age in England as a versatile popular writer, editor and lecturer. His involvement in the venture of ‘commercial science’, or the display and exploitation of knowledge, reflects a career route for a non-elite practitioner to earn a living and build scientific reputation in early Victorian gentlemanly science. The venture included his establishment of the popular journal The Magazine of Science and School of Arts (1839–1852). He also associated himself with the network of the scientific elites by communicating to the learned, such as the pre-eminent botanist William Hooker. By examining the distinctive trajectory of Francis's career, this essay explores the potential and limits of such strategies to gain institutional recognition from the scientific community in the pre-professionalized period.