Bees in Early Modern Transatlantic Literature

"Though there are studies that discuss bees in Shakespeare, and in America, this is the first that attempts to bridge the Atlantic to demonstrate the way apian imagery is used as Europeans colonize America. This new ground is important, and the book is an important contribution to literary studies and the history of the bee." Richard Grinnell, Marist College

"In the century preceding Mandeville’s famous grumbling hive, Jacobs reveals how the European honeybee was already vital to how British writers advanced changing ideas about sustainable politics, sovereignty, the power of workers, and the role of other species in human affairs. She uncovers in a wealth of primary texts why the British carried actual bees in hives as well as differing ideas of what they meant forward and into the American colonies, with complex social repercussions. Jacobs shows with admirable clarity the crucial role bees played in the early modern literary and political imagination on both sides of the Atlantic." John Morrillo, NC State University