Dispatches from Abroad: Cancelled by Neglect?

I’m coming to the end of a wonderful four-month fellowship at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden, a city that celebrates at every turn its most illustrious citizen: the 18th-century botanist, zoologist, and “father of modern taxonomy,” Carl Linnaeus (a.k.a. Carl von Linné or simply “Linnaeus”) (1707–1778). From the eight trails on which he took his students every spring to learn about the geology, ecosystems, plants, and animals surrounding Uppsala—the Herbationes Upsalienses—to his grave in the Uppsala Cathedral, there is some place to visit and something to do every long day of the late spring and summer months to celebrate his legacy. I’ll write more about that another time, but today, I want to write about the disappearance from historical memory of one of his daughters, Sara Christina (1751–1835).

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