author
Edward Wilkin Perry
These early-1900s books turn everyday tropical goods into lively subjects, tracing how bananas and rubber were grown, traded, and woven into modern life. The result is a brisk, curious glimpse of commerce and culture at the start of the twentieth century.
1 Audiobook
Bananas: Nature's Institution for the Promotion of Laziness
by Edward Wilkin Perry
About the author
Very little biographical information about this author is easy to confirm today, but surviving library and public-domain records clearly show that Edward Wilkin Perry wrote short nonfiction works about tropical products and industry in the early 1900s.
His known books include Rubber, the Handmaid of Civilization (1903), Bananas; Nature's Institution for the Promotion of Laziness (1903, revised edition), and Bananas; the Golden Treasure of the Tropics (1905). These works suggest a writer interested in explaining how familiar commodities were cultivated, marketed, and made useful to a modern readership.
Because so little personal history is readily documented, Perry is best approached through the books themselves: compact, energetic snapshots of an era fascinated by global trade, industrial materials, and the promise of the tropics.