The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science

631 Pages·2010·6.12 MB·English

by  Richard Holmes

ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES
One for Sorrow (poems)
Shelley: The Pursuit
Shelley on Love (editor)
Gautier: My Fantoms (translations)
Nerval: The Chimeras (with Peter Jay)
Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin: A Short Residence in
Sweden and Memoirs (editor, Penguin Classics)
De Feministe en de Filosoof
Dr Johnson & Mr Savage
Coleridge: Early Visions
Coleridge: Darker Reflections
Coleridge: Selected Poems (editor, Penguin Classics)
Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer
Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer
Insights: The Romantic Poets and their Circle
Classic Biographies (series editor)

To Jon Cook at Radio Flatlands
Contents
List of illustrations
Prologue
1 Joseph Banks in Paradise
2 Herschel on the Moon
3 Balloonists in Heaven
4 Herschel Among the Stars
5 Mungo Park in Africa
6 Davy on the Gas
7 Dr Frankenstein and the Soul
8 Davy and the Lamp
9 Sorcerer and Apprentice
10 Young Scientists
Epilogue
Cast List
Bibliography
References
Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Frontispiece: A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in
which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun, by Joseph Wright of Derby,
1766. © Derby City Council
Joseph Banks, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1771-73. © National Portrait
Gallery, London
Chart of the island Otaheite, by Lieut. J. Cook, 1769. © The David
Rumsay Map Collection, www.davidrumsay.com
Sydney Parkinson. From the frontispiece to his Journal (1773).
A Woman and a Boy, Natives of Otaheite in the Dress of the Country.
Engraving after Parkinson by T. Chambers, from Sydney Parkinson,
Journal of a Voyage in the South Seas (1773). © Reproduced by
permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library Mm.54.19
Omai, Banks and Solander, by William Parry, c.1775-76. © National
Portrait Gallery, London/National Museum Cardiff/Captain Cook
Memorial Museum, Whitby
Dorothea Hugessen, Lady Banks, by Joseph Collyer the Younger, after
John Russell, c.1790. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Captain James Cook, by John Webber, 1776. © National Portrait
Gallery, London
William Herschel (locket), c.1760. With the kind permission of John
Herschel-Shorland
Sir William Herschel, by Lemuel Francis Abbott, 1785. © National
Portrait Gallery, London
Caroline Herschel (silhouette), c.1768. © By permission of the
Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford
William and Caroline Herschel. Coloured lithograph, 1890. ©
Wellcome Library, London
Engraved frontispiece to John Bonnycastle’s Introduction to
Astronomy (1811).
The constellations of Perseus and Andromeda, from John Flamsteed’s
Celestial Atlas (1729).
The seven-foot reflector telescope with which Herschel discovered
Uranus in 1781. Royal Astronomical Society. Drawing by Sir William
Watson. © Royal Astronomical Society/Science Photo Library
Herschel’s seven-foot reflector telescope. Whipple Museum,
Cambridge. Photograph by Richard Holmes.
Sir Joseph Banks holding an astronomical painting of the moon.
Portrait by John Russell, RA, 1788 © Private collection/Photograph by
Alex Sounderson
Selenographia Moon Globe by John Russell, London, 1797. © By
permission of the Museum of the History of Science, University of
Oxford
Detail from the original manuscript of Keats’s sonnet ‘On First
Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (1816). © By permission of the
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Detail from Herschel’s Astronomical Observation Journal for Tuesday,
13 March 1781. © Royal Astronomical Society/Science Photo Library
Hubble Space Telescope image of Uranus, August 2003. ©
NASA/ESA/STSCI/E. Karkoschka, U. Arizona/Science Photo Library
Herschel’s forty-foot reflector telescope. © Royal Astronomical
Society/Science Photo Library
Sir William Herschel. Stipple engraving by James Godby, after
Friedrich Rehberg, 1814. © National Portrait Gallery, London
The first balloon crossing of the English Channel, 7 January 1785. Oil
painting by E.W. Cocks, c.1840. © Science Museum/Science &
Society Picture Library
The first manned ascent in a Montgolfier hot-air balloon, Paris, 21
November 1783. Plate taken from Le Journal. © Science
Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
William Blake’s mocking view of scientific endeavour. Line engraving
from For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise (1793). © Fitzwilliam
Museum, University of Cambridge, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library
Early view of the earth from a balloon. Coloured engraving from a
sketch by Thomas Baldwin, Airopaidia (1786). © British Library
Board. All Rights Reserved 1137.c.17
The first manned ascent in a hydrogen balloon, Paris, 1 December
1783. © Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
John Jeffries. Steel engraving after an original by Tissandier, c.1780s.
© Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Engraving by J. Newton after R. Livesay, 1785.
© Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
Vincent Lunardi. Print published by E. Hedges, 1784.
James Sadler, by Edmund Scott, after James Roberts, 1785. © Science
Museum/Science & Society Picture Library
Plaque to Sadler at Merton Field, Oxford. © pbpgalleries/Alamy
Mungo Park. Miniature after Henry Edridge, c.1797. © National
Portrait Gallery, London
Park following his first African travels. Thomas Rowlandson, c.1805.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Title page of the 1860 edition of Park’s Travels in the Interior of Africa
(1799).
A sketch map of the northern part of Africa, by Major John Rennell,
1790. Photograph by Alex Sounderson
The death of Mungo Park. From the 1860 edition of his Travels.
Coleridge, by Peter Vandyke, 1795. © National Portrait Gallery,
London
Byron, by Richard Westall, 1813. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Keats, by Charles Armitage Brown, 1819. © National Portrait Gallery,
London
Erasmus Darwin. After Joseph Wright of Derby, 1770. © National
Portrait Gallery, London
Shelley, by Amelia Curran, 1819. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Blake, by Thomas Phillips, 1807. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Young Humphry Davy, by Henry Howard, oil on canvas, 1803. ©
National Portrait Gallery, London
Rival safety lamps designed by George Stephenson and Humphry
Davy, c.1816-18. © Science Museum/Science & Society Picture
Library
Sir Humphry Davy, by Thomas Phillips, oil on canvas, 1821. ©
National Portrait Gallery, London
Sir Humphry Davy, PRS, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, c.1821-22 or later.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Scientific Researches! … Gillray cartoon published by Hannah
Humphrey, 1801. © Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New
College, Oxford/The Bridgeman Art Library
Dr Thomas Beddoes. Miniature by Sampson Towgood Roche, 1794. ©
National Portrait Gallery, London
Edgeworth family portrait by Adam Buck, 1787. Michael Butler;
photograph © National Portrait Gallery, London
The Davy safety lamps. Published in Collected Works of Humphry
Davy, Volume 6 (1840). © The Royal Society
John Buddle, mining engineer, with Davy lamp.
Prototype safety lamps, 1815-16. Photograph, The Royal Society. ©
The Royal Institution, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library
Unidentified female author, by Samuel John Stump, oil on canvas,
1831. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Frontispiece of the 1831 edition of Frankenstein. © British Library
Board. All Rights Reserved 1153.a.9.(1)
Mary Shelley, by Richard Rothwell, 1840. © National Portrait Gallery,
London
John Herschel aged about seven, 1799. With the kind permission of
John Herschel-Shorland.
The Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal presented to Caroline
Herschel in 1828. © The Mistress and Fellows of Girton College,
Cambridge
Michael Faraday, by William Brockedon, 1831. © National Portrait