Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples.
Christine de Pizan,
The Book of the City of Ladies
1405
ALSO BY ELIZABETH GILBERT
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The Last American Man
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At Home on the Range, by Margaret Yardley Potter
VIKING
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Copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Gilbert
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gilbert, Elizabeth, date
The signature of all things : a novel / Elizabeth Gilbert.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-63800-2
1. Women botanists—Fiction. 2. Painters—Fiction. 3. Enlightenment—Fiction. 4. Industrial revolution—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.I3415S54 2013
813'.54—dc23 2013017045
Interior illustrations:
1: Cinchona calisaya
2: Dicranaceae
3: Aerides odoratum
4: Artocarpus incisa
5: Juglans laciniosa
The LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Also by Elizabeth Gilbert
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
PART ONE
The Tree of Fevers
PART TWO
The Plum of White Acre
PART THREE
The Disturbance of Messages
PART FOUR
The Consequence of Missions
PART FIVE
The Curator of Mosses
Acknowledgments