The Signature of All Things

Introduction

The Signature of All Things is an adult historical novel by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. It was published by Penguin Random House in 2013, and Gilbert had already established herself on the New York Times bestseller list with her two memoirs, Eat, Pray, Love (2006) and Committed (2010), after garnering critical acclaim for her earlier fiction, biographies, and magazine journalism.

The Signature of All Things spans the life of the fictional Alma Whittaker, a keenly curious and practical amateur botanist who comes of age on her wealthy father’s Philadelphia estate, falls in love, travels abroad, and arrives at a startling understanding of evolution just before Charles Darwin releases his groundbreaking work, On the Origin of Species. A detailed, sweeping epic of the 19th century and the birth of science, Gilbert’s novel was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New York Times, O Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The New Yorker and was also nominated for the 2014 Carnegie Medal for Fiction. This guide quotes from the hardcover edition published by Viking in 2013, which includes reproductions of botanical illustrations in the cover, endpapers, and section headings.

Content Warning: The Signature of All Things features outdated and offensive terms that were widely used in the 19th century to describe Black and Indigenous people and gay men.