“The English Pupil” begins outside the town of Uppsala, Sweden, on a very cold late December afternoon in 1777. Carl Linnaeus, the famous naturalist, who is now seventy years old and dying, is riding in a horse-drawn sleigh. He orders his coachman to take him to his country estate, Hammarby, which lies beyond city limits. The coachman agrees only reluctantly, since he has been told by his employers not to take the sleigh outside of the city.

Linnaeus watches the landscape go by and thinks of Lappland, which he had explored when he was in his mid-twenties, learning about the natural world, which had amazed him with its beauty.

Linnaeus has suffered a series of strokes and now his once-famous memory has almost gone. He tends to forget what he is doing and where he is, he cannot remember the names of plants and animals or...