Patrick Dean
As part of their Tuesday Talks series, the Port Royal Sound Foundation, in partnership with the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, will host an afternoon lecture by Patrick Dean, author of the recently published book Nature’s Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World. This program will be held on on September 12, 3:00 p.m., at the Maritime Center’s education classroom, 310 Okatie Hwy, Okatie. $10/person. Books will be available for sale and signing. Register in advance via the Book a Program button at https://portroyalsoundfoundation.org/.
About Nature’s Messenger
“In this enlightening biography, nature writer Dean traces the life of British naturalist Mark Catesby (1683–1749), whose The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands was among the first European accounts of the flora and fauna of the Americas and influenced John James Audubon. An informative account of an important if lesser-known naturalist.”–Publishers Weekly
In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this 
young naturalist made history as he explored deep into America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna.
In Nature’s Messenger, acclaimed writer Patrick Dean follows Catesby from his youth as a landed gentleman
in rural England to his early work as a naturalist and his adventurous travels. A pioneer in many ways, Catesby’s careful attention to the knowledge of non-Europeans in America—the enslaved Africans and Native Americans who had their own sources of food and medicine from nature—set him apart from others of his time.
Nature’s Messenger takes us from the rice plantations of the Carolina Lowcountry to the bustling coffeehouses of 18th-century England, from the sun-drenched islands of the Bahamas to the austere meeting-rooms of London’s Royal Society, then presided over by Isaac Newton. It was a time of discovery, of intellectual ferment, and of the rise of the British Empire. And there on history’s leading edge, recording the extraordinary and often violent mingling of cultures as well as of nature, was Mark Catesby.
Patrick Dean writes on the outdoors and the environment. He has worked as a teacher, a political media director, and is presently the executive director of a rail-trail nonprofit. An avid trail-runner, paddler, and mountain-biker, he lives with his wife and dogs on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, and is the author of A Window to Heaven, about the summit of Denali.
Learn more about the Port Royal Sound Foundation at https://portroyalsoundfoundation.org. Learn more about the Pat Conroy Literary Center at https://patconroyliterarycenter.org.
