The Age of Wonder

  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

  Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, Penguin, 1992

  Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science, Faber, 1992

  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

  Peter Whitfield, The Mapping of the Heavens, The British Library, 1995

  John Carey (editor), The Faber Book of Science, Faber, 1995

  Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: Volume I: Voyaging, and Volume 2: The Power of Place, Pimlico, 1995 and 2000

  Michael Shortland and Richard Yeo, Telling Lives in Science: Essays in Scientific Biography, CUP, 1996

  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

  Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004

  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