The French Collector
Journal and Letters of Théodore Leschenault, Botanist of the Baudin Expedition
‘It is only with difficulty that I may describe for you the sensations I felt the first time I went ashore on an unknown coast. My whole being was filled with confused pleasure, everything around me sparked my curiosity – pebbles, shells washed up on the beach, plants. I collected all with wild enthusiasm…’
The French botanist Théodore Leschenault (1773–1826) travelled with Nicolas Baudin’s voyage of discovery to Australia in the years 1800 to 1803: his journal and letters vividly record his impressions of the plant life and animals he encountered, along with dramatic and unsettling meetings with Indigenous peoples. Shaped as much by Enlightenment ideas as by his painful experience of the French Revolution, Leschenault weaves through his travelogue reflections on topics ranging from slavery and colonialism to plant systematics and environmental damage.
Long thought lost, Leschenault’s original manuscript journal was rediscovered only in 2016. The French Collector offers the first complete English translation of this journal (including two previously unknown chapters recounting his experiences in Le Havre, Tenerife and Mauritius) and various letters relating to the expedition. This edition also provides extensive explanatory notes and an introduction which details Leschenault’s early life in Burgundy and imprisonment during the Revolution and sets his activities against the backdrop of French science and exploration in the period.
Dr Paul Gibbard completed his doctorate on late nineteenth-century French and English literature at Oxford University and worked as a researcher on the scholarly edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford. He has taught French at the universities of Adelaide and Melbourne, and has been involved in a pair of research projects funded by the Australian Research Council: the ‘Baudin Legacy’ project with the University of Adelaide, and a project on ‘Eighteenth-Century Women’s Political Thought’ at Monash University. Dr Gibbard is a Senior Lecturer for European Languages and Studies at The University of Western Australia.
