Traveling in Place: Gilbert White's Cosmopolitan Parochialism

Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, in the County of Southampton (London, 789) dedicates itself to the proposition that a place so minute as the parish of Selborne, a district roughly thirty miles in circumference with “all its curves and indentings” (5) exhibits sufficient topographical particularity, singular phenomena, and curious inhabitants to interest a growing audience of armchair travelers and natural history enthusiasts.1 White (720 – 793) offers his definition of the dimensions and constitutive elements of place as an innovative contribution to the literature of popular regional histories that commenced with Robert Plot’s Natural History of Oxfordshire in 677. In the Advertisement to Selborne, he submits to the public his “idea of parochial history,” which will include detailed observations on a region’s natural “productions and occurrences” along with more traditional antiquarianism. White’s letters from Selborne have proven enduringly popular, bearing out the audacious prediction John Mulso made for his friend’s modest book: “Your work, upon the whole, will immortalize your Place of Abode as well as Yourself.”2 Seeing more than two hundred