JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY, 1734-97. Dramatic painter of experimental and industrial scenes, who reinterpreted late-eighteenth-century Enlightenment science as a mysterious, romantic adventure into the unknown. Close friend of Erasmus Darwin and the Lunar men. His most influential pictures were The Orrery (1767, frontispiece of this book), The Air Pump (1768, National Gallery, London) and The Alchemist (Derby, 1770). He also produced some striking, almost apocalyptic industrial scenes of factories and forges (especially at night), and many fine individual portraits.
EDWARD YOUNG, 1683-1765. Poet and clergyman. His major work, Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742), a poem in twelve books, was a traditional Christian meditation on the way the universe demonstrated God’s design and divine creativity. He announced, An undevout astronomer is mad,’ though he had some doubts about the size and complication of the cosmos as revealed by Newton’s mathematics: ‘Perhaps a seraph’s computation fails!’ (Book IX, lines 1,226-35). A later edition of the poem was superbly illustrated with William Blake’s watercolour engravings, a consolation for those terrified by the new cosmology.
Bibliography
The Bigger Picture
(In chronological order of publication)
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago UP, 1962-70
Albert Bettex, The Discovery of Nature (with 482 illustrations), Thames & Hudson, 1965
James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, 1968/2001
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, Danube edition, 1969
Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, 1973
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James Gleick, Richard Feynman and Modern Physics, Pantheon Books, 1992
Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe from Herschel to Hubble, Chicago UP, 1994
Gale Christianson, Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995
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Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, 1996
Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present, HarperCollins, 1997
John Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire, CUP, 1998
Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1998
Lisa Jar dine, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution, Little, Brown, 1999
Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth, Picador, 2000
Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits 1660-2000, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2000
Patricia Fara, Newton: The Making of Genius, Macmillan, 2000
Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routledge, 2001
Thomas Crump, A Brief History of Science as Seen Through the Development of Scientific Instruments, Constable, 2001
Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Picador, 2001
Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann, Oxygen (a play in 2 acts), Wiley, New York, 2001
Anne Thwaite, Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of P.H. Gosse, Faber, 2002
Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, HarperCollins, 2002 Peter Harman and Simon Mitton (editors), Cambridge Scientific Minds, CUP, 2002
Arnold Wesker, Longitude (a play in 2 acts), Amber Lane Press, 2006
Natalie Angier, The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science, Faber, 2007
Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Simon & Schuster, 2007
George Steiner, My Unwritten Books, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008
The Scientific and Intellectual Background 1760-1830
Peter Ackroyd, Newton, Chatto & Windus, 2006
Madison Smartt Bell, Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in the Age of Revolution, Atlas Books, Norton, 2005
Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900, CUP, 1986
Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences, CUP, 1990
Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, A Philosophical Poem with Notes, 1791
Hermione de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats, OUP, 1991
Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine and Reform in Radical London, Chicago UP, 1989
Patricia Fara, Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Age of Enlightenment, Pimlico, 2004
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower (a novel), HarperCollins, 1995
Tim Fulford (editor), Romanticism and Science, 1773-1833, a 5-vol anthology, Pickering, 2002
Tim Fulford and Peter Kitson (editors), Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830, CUP, 1998
John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, CUP, 1994
James Gleick, Isaac Newton, Pantheon Books, 2003
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Scientific Studies (edited by Douglas Miller), Suhrkamp edition of Goethe’s Works, vol 12, New York, 1988
Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain 1760-1820, CUP, 1992
Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds, Picador, 2001
Peter Harman and Simon Mitron, Cambridge Scientific Minds, CUP, 2002
John Herschel, On the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1832
J.E. Hodgson, History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, OUP, 1924
Penelope Hughes-Hallett, The Immortal Dinner, Penguin, 2001
Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets, Macmillan, 1986
David Knight, Science in the Romantic Era (essays), Ashgate, 1998
David Knight, Science and Spirituality, Routledge, 2003
Trevor H. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Coleridge and Early Nineteenth-Century Science, CUP, 1981
Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840, Hamish Hamilton, 1966, 1987
Alfred Noyes, The Torchbearers: An Epic Poem, 1937
William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, OUP, 2004
James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Chicago UP, 2000
Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future, 1730-1810, Faber, 2002
Jenny Uglow and Francis Spufford, Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention, Faber, 1996
Joseph Banks
Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Ms Journal 1768-77, University of New South Wales, Australia, internet copy
The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, edited by J.C. Beaglehole, Public Library of New South Wales, 1962
The Selected Letters of Sir Joseph Banks 1768-1820, edited by Neil Chambers, Imperial College Press, Natural History Museum and Royal Society, The Banks Project, 2000
The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks 1765-1820, edited by Neil Chambers, 6 vols, Pickering & Chatto Ltd, 2007
Hector Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, 1952
Sir Harold Carter, Sir Joseph Banks 1743-1820, British Museum, Natural History, 1988
Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook, Ebury, 2003
Journals of Captain Cook, edited by J.C. Beaglehole, 3 vols, CUP, 1955-74; Penguin Classics, edited by Philip Edwards, 1999
William Cowper, The Task, Book One, 1785
Patricia Fara, Joseph Banks: Sex, Botany and Empire, Pimlico, 2004
John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English
Enlightenment, CUP, 1994
Jocelyn Hackforth-Jones, ‘Mai’, illustrated essay in Between Two Worlds, National Portrait Galley catalogue, 2007
John Hawkesworth, Voyages Undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, 1773
Eva Lack, Die Abenteuers des Sir Joseph Banks (with rare illustrations of fish, plants and Harriet Blosset), Vienna and Cologne, 1985
James Lee, Introduction to Botany, with a Preface by Robert Thornton MD, 1785,1810
E.H. McCormick, Omai, OUP, 1978
Richard Mabey, Gilbert White, Century, 1986
Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact, 1966, 1987
Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks, Harvill Press, 1987
Sydney Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage in the South Seas, 1773
Roy Porter, ‘The Exotic as Erotic’, in Exoticism in the Enlightenment, edited by G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, Manchester UP, 1989
Edward Smith, Sir Joseph Banks, 1911
Daniel Solander, Collected Correspondence, edited by Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand, Scandinavia UP, 1995
William and Caroline Herschel
Angus Armitage, Sir William Herschel, Nelson, 1962
Helen Ashton, I Had a Sister, L. Dickson, 1937
John Bonnycastle, Introduction to Astronomy in Letters to his Pupil, 1786 (expanded editions 1788, 1811, 1822) Claire Brock, The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s Astronomical Ambition, Icon Books, Cambridge, 2007
Lord Byron, Selected Poems, edited by A.S.B. Glover, Penguin, 1974
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters, 6 vols, edited by E.L. Griggs, OUP, 1956-71
Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe, Dover, 1994
Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, A Philosophical Poem with Notes, 1791
James Ferguson, Astronomy Explained, with a Preface by David Brewster, 1811
The Herschel Chronicle, edited by Constance A. Lubbock (his granddaughter), 1933
Caroline Herschel, Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, edited by Mrs John Herschel, Murray, 1876; Cambridge UP, 1935
Caroline Herschel, Caroline Herschel’s Autobiographies, edited by Michael Hoskin, Science History Publications Ltd, Cambridge, 2003
William Herschel, Scientific Papers, 2 vols, edited by J.E. Dreyer, Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society, 1912
Michael Hoskin, William Herschel and the Construction of the Heavens, Osbourne, 1963
Michael Hoskin, Stellar Astronomy, Science History Publications, 1982
Michael Hoskin, The Herschel Partnership as Viewed by Caroline, Science History Publications, Cambridge, 2003
Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne, CUP, 1989
Edwin Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae, Constable, 1933
John Keats, Complete Poems, edited by John Barnard, Penguin, 1973
Henry Mayhew, James Ferguson, 1817
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley’s Prose, edited by David Lee Clark, Fourth Estate, 1988
Peter Sime, William Herschel, 1890
Adam Smith, The Principles of Philosophical Enquiries, Illustrated by the History of Astronomy, Edinburgh, 1795
Frances Wilson, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, Faber, 2008
Edward Young, Night Thoughts (poem), 1744-45
SPECIALIST ARTICLES
J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’ (with illustrations), Journal for the History of Astronomy 7, 1976
Michael Hoskin, ‘On Writing the History of Modern Astronomy’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 11, 1980
Michael Hoskin, ‘Caroline Herschel’s Comet Sweepers’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 12, 1981
Simon Schaffer, ‘Herschel on Matter Theory and Planetary Life’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 11, 1980
Simon Schaffer, ‘Uranus and Herschel’s Astronomy’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 12, 1981
Simon Schaffer, ‘Herschel in Bedlam: Natural History and Stellar Astronomy’, British Journal for the History of Science 13, 1986
Simon Schaffer, ‘On the Nebular Hypothesis’, in History, Humanity and Evolution, edited by J.R. Moore, CUP, 1988
The Balloonists
Thomas Baldwin, Airopaidia, 1786 (the narrative of a solo voyage in Lunardi’s balloon, including the first aerial sketches made from a balloon basket)
Henry Beaufoy, Account of an Ascent with James Sadler, from Hackney, 1811, British Library catalogue B.507 (I)
Henry Beaufoy, Two Balloon Scrapbooks of Henry Beaufoy, 1783-1843 (Item 57 in the McCormack Collection), Princeton University, USA
David Bourgeois, L’Art de Voler, Paris, 1784
Catalogue of Well-Known Balloon Prints and Drawings, Sotheby’s, 1962
Tiberius Cavallo FRS, The History and Practice of Aerostation, 1785
William Cowper, The Task (poem), in Letters and Poems, 1785
Le Départ du Rêve, Grand Palais exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1985
Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1791
Audoin Dollfuss, Pilâtre de Rozier, Association Francaise pour l’Avancement des Sciences, Paris, 1993
Raymonde Fontaine, La Manche en Ballon, Paris, 1982
The Gentleman’s Magazine – accounts of Lunardi’s ascents in 1784-85, and Sadler’s ascents in 1810-17
Charles Gillispie, The Montgolfier Brothers, Princeton UP, 1983
James Glaisher, with Camille Flammarion, Wilfred de Fonvielle and Gaston Tissandier, Travels in the Air, London, 1871
Charles Green, The Flight of the Nassau Balloon, 1836
Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds, Picador, 2001
Georgette Heyer, Frederica (a novel containing an excellent account of a balloon ascent), E.P. Dutton, 1965
J.E. Hodgson, History of Aeronautics in Great Britain, OUP, 1924
Dr John Jeffries, Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with M. Blanchard as Presented to the Royal Society, 1786
Vincent Lunardi, My Aerial Voyages in England, 1785; and Five Aerial Voyages in Scotland, 1785
Thomas Monck Mason, Aeronautica, 1838
Thomas Mayhew, An Account of a Balloon Flight, 1855
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Great Balloon Hoax’ (story), New York Sun, 1847
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, The Cloud Spotter’s Guide, Sceptre, 2006
L.T.C. Rolt, The Aeronauts, Longman, 1966
James Sadler, An Authentic Account of the Aerial Voyage, 1810
James Sadler, Across the Irish Channel, 1812
Windham Sadler, Aerostation, 1817
Mrs Sage, A Letter by Mrs Sage, the First English Female Aerial Traveller, on Her Voyage in Lunardi’s Balloon, 1785, British Library catalogue 1417.g.24
Gaston Tissandier, Histoire des Ballons et Aeronauts Célèbres 1783-1890, 2 vols, Paris, 1890
Mungo Park
William Feaver, The Paintings of John Martin, OUP, 1975. This includes a dramatic full-page colour reproduction of Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion (1812, Southampton Art Gallery)
Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, ‘Mental Travellers: Banks and African Exploration’, in Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004,
The Gentleman’s Magazine, long review of ‘Mr Park’s Travels’, with illustrations from Rennell, August 1799
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, A Negro Song’, 1799
Lewis Gibbons, Niger and Mungo Park, 1934
Stephen Gwynn, Mungo Park and the Quest for the Niger, 1932
BH (anon), The Life of Mungo Park, 1835, British Library catalogue 615.a.12
John Keats, ‘Nile Sonnets’, 1818
Kenneth Lupton, Mungo Park, African Traveller, OUP, 1979
Mungo Park, Journals, 2 vols, edited anonymously, including A Journal of Park’s Last Voyage’, Amadi Fatoumi’s Journal’ and a Memoir by W. Wishaw, 1815
Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, 1799, 1860; Nonesuch, 2005
Kira Salak, The Cruellest Journey: 6,000 Miles by Canoe to the Legendary City of Timbuktu, Bantam Books, 2005
Anthony Sattin, T
he Gates of Africa: Death, Discovery and the Search for Timbuktu, HarperCollins, 2003
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor (poem), 1815; and ‘Nile Sonnets’, 1818
Robert Southey, ‘Note on Mungo Park’, in Thalaba, 1803
Alfred Tennyson, ‘Timbucto’ (poem), 1827
Joseph Thomson, Mungo Park and the Niger, 1890
Charles Waterton, Wanderings in South America, 1825
William Wordsworth, rejected passage on Mungo Park, from The Prelude, 1805
Humphry Davy
Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, Considerations on the Medical Use of Factitious Airs, J. Johnson, 1794, British Library catalogue B. Tracts. 489
Henry Brougham, ‘Sir Humphry Davy’, in The Lives of the Philosophers in the Time of George III, London, 1855
George I. Brown, Count Rumford: The Extraordinary Life of a Scientific Genius, Sutton, 1999
Lord Byron, Don Juan (poem in 16 cantos), 1819-24
F.F. Cartwright, The English Pioneers of Anaesthesia, Simpkin Marshall, 1952
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters, edited by E.L. Griggs, vols 1-2, OUP
Humphry Davy, Collected Works, edited by John Davy, 9 vols, 1839-40
Humphry Davy, Fragmentary Remains, edited by John Davy, 1858
John Davy, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols, 1836
John Davy, Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy, in Humphry Davy, Collected Works, Vol I, 1839
Sophie Forgan (editor), Science and the Sons of Genius: Studies on Humphry Davy (essays), Science Reviews Ltd, 1980
June Z. Fullmer, Young Humphry Davy, American Philosophical Society, 2000
James Hamilton, Michael Faraday: The Life, HarperCollins, 2002
Harold Hartley, Humphry Davy, Open University, 1966
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989
Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, HarperCollins, 1998