William Swainson

A British Naturalist in Brazil (1817-1818)

Abstract

William Swainson, a British botanist and ornithologist, travelled to Brazil at the age of 27 in November 1816. He stayed six months in Recife and Olinda, nine months in and around Salvador da Bahia, and three months in Rio de Janeiro. The diaries, correspondence and accounts of his visit to the country were published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in 1819 and are valuable source of information about the political, economic and social life in Brazil at the time. Swainson was, for example, the only foreigner to witness the Pernambuco revolution in 1817. The main purpose of his visit to Brazil was to collect specimens, and, in June 1819, he returned to London with a collection of thousands of birds, fish, seeds and plants. He then became in the 19th century one of the finest illustrators of flora and fauna, especially of birds, and one of the first British naturalists to use the new technique of lithography. He published a series of albums of his drawings, including The Birds of Brazil (1834-36). Before immigrating to New Zealand in 1840, he sold his extensive insect collection at an auction. The Cambridge University Library acquired his valuable ornithological collection of mainly Brazilian birds, as well as his ornithological drawings. He took hundreds of drawings and his plant collection to New Zealand, where he died in 1855.