The Age of Wonder

  David Knight, Humphry Davy: Vision and Power, Blackwell Science Biographies, 1992

  Davy Lamont-Brown, Humphry Davy: Life Beyond the Lamp, History Press, 2004

  John Ayrton Paris, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, 2 vols, 1831

  Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity, HarperCollins, 1997

  Nicholas Roe (editor), Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life, OUP, 2001,

  W.D.A. Smith, Under the Influence: A History of Nitrous Oxide and Oxygen Anaesthesia, Macmillan, 1982

  Robert Southey, The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, edited by C.C. Southey, vols 1-2, 1849

  Dorothy A. Stansfield, Thomas Beddoes MD: Chemist, Physician, Democrat, Reidel Publishing, Boston, 1984

  Thomas Thorpe, Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher, 1896

  Anne Treneer, The Mercurial Chemist: A Life of Sir Humphry Davy, Methuen, 1963

  THE SAFETY LAMP AND CONTROVERSY

  A Collection of all Letters in Newcastle papers relating to Safety Lamps, London, 1817. See British Library catalogue Tracts 8708.i.2 (1)

  Humphry Davy, On the Safety Lamp for Preventing Explosions, London, 1825 (contains an Appendix on the use of his safety lamps in Europe)

  Humphry Davy, On the Safety Lamp for Coal Miners, with Some Researches into Flame (6 papers), London, 1818. See also his revised version in Collected Works, Vol 6, 1840

  J.H.H. Holmes, A Treatise on Coalmining of Durham and Northumberland and the Explosions of Firedamp in the last 20 Years, London, 1816, British Library catalogue 726.e.37

  Frank A.J.L. James, ‘How Big is a Hole? The Problems of the Practical Application of Science in the Invention of the Miners’ Safety Lamp by Humphry Davy and George Stephenson in Late Regency England’, in Transactions of the Newcomen Society 75, 2005, pp.175-227

  John Playfair, ‘Sir Humphry Davy’s Safety Lamp’, in Edinburgh Review LI, 1816, pp.230-40

  ‘Report of the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines’, in Parliamentary Papers, 1835, vol 5, September 1835. British Library (Science) Series Parliamentary Papers 1835

  Samuel Smiles, George Stephenson, 1855

  Stephenson’s Lamp now at Killingworth compared to Humphry Davy’s Lamp (2 pamphlets), London, 1817, British Library catalogue 8708.i.2 (5)

  Dr Frankenstein and the Soul

  John Abernethy, An Enquiry into Mr Hunter’s Theory of Life Lectures, 1815

  John Abernethy, A General View of Mr Hunter’s Physiology, 1817

  John Abernethy, The Hunterian Oration for 1819, 1819

  John Abernethy, ‘Letters to George Kerr 1814-1822’, in St Bart’s Hospital Journal, 1930-1, vol 38, edited by A.W. Franklin

  Xavier Bichat, Physiological Researches on Life and Death (translated by F. Gold), 1816

  Fred Botting (editor), New Casebooks: Frankenstein, Palgrave, 1995

  Druin Burch, Digging up the Dead: The Life and Times of Astley Cooper, Chatto & Windus, 2007

  Fanny Burney, The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay), vol 6, edited by Joyce Hemlow, Oxford, 1975

  Richard Carlile, Address to the Men of Science, 1821

  F.F. Cartwright, The English Pioneers of Anaesthesia, Simpkin Marshall, 1952

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (with James Gillman and J.H. Green), Notes Towards a More Comprehensive Theory of Life, 1816-19; edited by Seth B. Watson MD, 1848

  Nora Crook and Derek Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody, CUP, 1986

  Humphry Davy, Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, 1814

  Hermione de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats, OUP, 1991

  Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821

  Thomas De Quincey, ‘Animal Magnetism’ (essay), 1840

  Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Medicine in Radical London, Chicago, 1989

  George D’Oyly, ‘An Enquiry into the Probability of Mr Hunter’s Theory of Life’ (The Vitality Debate), in Quarterly Review, 1819, vol 43, pp.1-34. Usefully reprinted in Oxford World’s Classics edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Appendix B

  Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, ‘Exploration, Headhunting and Race Theory’, in Literature, Science and Exploration, CUP, 2004

  Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain 1760-1820, CUP, 1992

  Carl Grabo, A Newton Among Poets: Shelley’s Use of Science in Prometheus Unbound, University of North Carolina Press, 1931

  John Keats, ‘Lamia’ (poem), 1820

  William Lawrence, A Short System of Comparative Anatomy by JF Blumenbach (translated with an Introduction by Lawrence), 1807

  William Lawrence, An Introduction to Comparative Anatomy: Two Lectures, 1816

  William Lawrence, The Natural History of Man (Lectures on Physiology and Zoology), 1819

  William Lawrence, ‘On Life’, Rees’s Cyclopaedia, 1819

  William Lawrence, ‘On Man’, Rees’s Cyclopaedia, 1820

  Trevor H. Levere, Poetry Realized in Nature: Coleridge and Early Nineteenth Century Science, CUP, 1981

  Helen MacDonald, Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories, Yale UP, 2006

  Anne K. Mellor, A Feminist Critique of Science’, in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fictions, Her Monsters, Routledge, 1988

  Peter Mudford, ‘William Lawrence’, in Journal of the History of Ideas 29, 1968

  Roy Porter and G. Rousseau (editors), The Ferment of Knowledge, CUP, 1980

  Nicholas Roe, ‘John Thelwall’s Essay on Animal Vitality’, in The Politics of Nature, Palgrave, 2002

  Sharon Ruston, Shelley and Vitality, Palgrave, 2005

  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, 1818; the 1818 edition reprinted in Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Marilyn Butler, 1993; 2nd edition, 1831, reprinted as composite edition, Penguin Classics, edited by Maurice Hindle, 1992

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, essays ‘On Life’, ‘On Love’, ‘On Dreams’, ‘On a Future State’, ‘On the Devil and Devils’, ‘On Christianity’ (1814-18), in Shelley’s Prose, or The Trumpet of a Prophecy, edited by David Lee Clark, Fourth Estate, 1988

  Walter Wetzels, ‘Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Romantic Physics in Germany’, in Romanticsm and the Sciences, edited by Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jar dine, CUP, 1990

  Sorcerer and Apprentice; and Young Scientists

  Charles Babbage, The Decline of Science in England, 1830

  David Brewster, Life of Isaac Newton, Murray’s Family Library, 1831

  The British Association for the Advancement of Science: Early Correspondence, edited by Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, The Camden Society, 1984

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

  Gunther Buttman, In the Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel, Lutterworth Press, 1974

  Charles Darwin, Correspondence: Vol I, 1821-1836, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, CUP, 1985

  Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1831-1836, edited by Janet Browne and Michael Neve, Penguin Classics, 1989

  Charles Darwin, Autobiography, edited by Michael Neve, Penguin Classics, 2002

  Humphry Davy, Consolations in Travel, or The Last Days of a Philosopher, Murray’s Family Library, 1829, 1831

  Michael Faraday, Correspondence 1811-1831, Vol 1, edited by Frank A.L.J. James, Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1991

  Marie Boas Hall, All Scientists Now, CUP, 1984

  James Hamilton, Michael Faraday: The Life, HarperCollins, 2002

  John Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1831

  John Herschel, Herschel at the Cape: Letters and Journals of John Herschel, edited by David S. Evans, Texas, 1969

  Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974

  Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: The Early Years of the BAAS, O UP, 1981

  Steven Ruskin, John Herschel’s Cape Voyage, Ashgate, 20
04

  James Secord, Victorian Sensation, Chicago UP, 2000

  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1st edition, Lackington, 1818; edited by Marilyn Butler, Oxford World’s Classics, 1993

  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 2nd edition, Bentley’s Popular Library, 1831; reprinted as composite edition, Penguin Classics, edited by Maurice Hindle, 1992

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound: An Epic Poem in 4 Acts, 1819

  Mary Somerville, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 1834

  Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, Kessinger, 2003

  David Wooster, Paula Trevelyan (Paulina Jermyn), 1879

  References

  ABBREVIATIONS

  CHA – Caroline Herschel’s Autobiographies, edited by Michael Hoskin, Scientific Publications Ltd, Cambridge, 2003

  CHM — Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Hesrchel, edited by Mrs John Herschel, Murray, 1879

  HD Archive — Humphry Davy Manuscripts and scientific instruments held at the Royal Institution, London

  HD Mss Bristol — Humphry Davy Mss at Somerset Record Office, Bristol

  HD Mss Truro — Humphry Davy Mss at the Cornwall Record Office, Truro

  HD Works — Humphry Davy, Collected Works, edited by John Davy, 9 vols, 1839–40

  JB Correspondence – The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks 1765-1820, edited by Neil Chambers, 6 vols, Pickering & Chatto Ltd, 2007

  JB Journal — Joseph Banks, Manuscript of the Endeavour Journal 1768-1770, University of New South Wales (internet transcript). See also The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, edited by J.C. Beaglehole, Public Library of New South Wales, 2 vols, 1962; and Joseph Banks, Endeavour Journal Ms, 1768-70 (facsimile edition, London Library)

  JB Letters – 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

  JD Fragments – Humphry Davy, Fragmentary Remains, edited by John Davy, 1858

  JD Life – The Life of Sir Humphry Davy, by John Davy, 2 vols, 1836

  JD Memoirs – Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy, by John Davy, 1839 (included in vol 1 of HD Works)

  Park Mss — ‘Letters and Papers relating to Mungo Park’s last Journey’, British Library Add Mss 37232.k and Add Mss 33230.f

  WH Archive — Private archive, John Herschel-Shorland, Norfolk

  WH Chronicle – The Herschel Chronicle, edited by his granddaughter Constance A. Lubbock, CUP, 1933

  WH Mss — William Herschel Manuscripts, Cambridge University Library microfilm, from manuscripts held at the Royal Astronomical Society, London

  WH Papers — The Collected Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel including Early Papers hitherto Unpublished, edited by J.L.E. Dreyer, 2 vols, Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society, 1912

  Prologue

  1 The notion of ‘Romantic science’ has been pioneered by Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture, 1760-1820, CUP, 1992; Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, Romanticism and the Sciences, CUP, 1990; Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, Routledge, 2001; Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004; and Tim Fulford (editor), Romanticism and Science, 1773-1833, a 5-vol anthology, Pickering, 2002

  2 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Philosophical Lectures 1819, edited by Kathleen Coburn, London, 1949; and The Friend 1819, ‘Essays on the Principles of Method’, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Princeton UP, 1969. See Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998, pp480–4, 490–4

  3 Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1850, Book 3, lines 58-64

  4 Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 1825; see Holmes, op. cit, pp548-9

  5 Plato’s wonder as interpreted by Coleridge in ‘Spiritual Aphorism 9’, Aids to Reflection, 1825, p236

  Chapter 1: Joseph Banks in Paradise

  1 JB Journal, 18 October 1768

  2 Ibid., 11 April 1769

  3 JB letter to Pennat, November 1768; from Harold Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, British Library, 1988, p76

  4 JB Journal, 14 April 1769

  5 Hector Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, 1952, p6

  6 Vanessa Collingridge, Captain Cook, 2003, p158

  7 JB Journal, 2 May 1769

  8 James Cook, Journal, 2 May 1769

  9 JB Journal, 2 May 1769

  10 JB Journal, ‘On the Customs of the South Sea Islands’, pp120-50, essay dated August 1769

  11 Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks, Harvill, 1989, p65

  12 Ibid.

  13 John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 1994, p17

  14 Ibid., p88

  15 Lady Mary Coke, Journals, August 1771, p437

  16 JB letter to William Perrin, February 1768, from Gascoigne, p16

  17 JB Journal, 10 September 1768

  18 JB Journal, p23

  19 O’Brian, p65

  20 White, 8 October 1768; from Richard Mabey, Gilbert White, Century, 1986, p115

  21 JB Journal, 16 January 1769

  22 Ibid., 25 March 1769

  23 Ibid., 17 April 1769

  24 Sydney Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage in the South Seas, 1773, p15

  25 JB Journal, 30 April 1769

  26 Ibid., 29 April 1769

  27 Ibid., 25 April 1769

  28 Ibid., 22 April 1769

  29 Ibid., 4 June 1769

  30 James Cook, Journal, Tuesday, 6 June 1769

  31 Parkinson, Journal, from Collingridge, p166

  32 JB Journal, 10 May 1769

  33 JB Journal, pp120-50, essay dated August 1769

  34 JB Journal, 3 June 1769

  35 Ibid., 28 April 1769

  36 Ibid., 28 May 1769

  37 Ibid., 29 May 1769

  38 Ibid., 12 May 1769

  39 Ibid., 10 June 1769

  40 Ibid., 13 June 1769

  41 Ibid., 14 June 1769

  42 Ibid., 18 June 1769

  43 Ibid., 24 June 1769

  44 Ibid., 19 June 1769

  45 Ibid., 22 June 1769

  46 Parkinson, Journal, 1773, p32; and O’Brian, p101

  47 James Cook, Journal, 30 June 1769

  48 JB Journal, 28 June 1769

  49 Ibid., 30 July 1769

  50 Ibid., 29 June 1769

  51 JB Letters, ‘Thoughts on the Manners of the Otaheite’, 1773, p332

  52 JB Journal, 3 July 1769

  53 Ibid., 12 July 1769

  54 Ibid.

  55 Ibid.

  56 JB Letters, 6 December 1771, p20

  57 Parkinson, Journal, 1773, p66

  58 JB Journal, ‘On the South Seas’, August 1769, p124

  59 Ibid., p128

  60 Ibid., p132

  61 Ibid.

  62 JB Journal, (end) August 1770. Cook’s entry of the same date describes the natives as ‘in reality … far more happier than we Europeans’

  63 JB Journal, 3 September 1770

  64 O’Brian, pp145-6

  65 JB Letters, 13 July 1771, p14

  66 Gascoigne, p46

  67 O’Brian, p66

  68 Lady Mary Coke, Journals, August 1771, from Edward Smith, Joseph Banks, p22n

  69 O’Brian, p151

  70 Robert Thornton MD, Preface to An Introduction to Botany, by James Lee, 1810, ppxvii–iii

  71 Gascoigne, p17

  72 Thornton, 1810, ppxviii

  73 Cameron, p44

  74 Ibid., p45

  75 Ibid., p46

  76 James Boswell, Journal, 22 March 1772

  77 John Hawkesworth, ‘Tahiti’, in Voyages Undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, 1773; the section can also be found in Fulford, Romanticism and Science, vol 4, pp158-9

  78 JB, ‘Thoughts on the Manners of the Otaheite’, 1773, JB Letters, p330

  79 JB letter, 30 May 1772, from O’Brian, p158

  80 Lord Sandwich to Banks, 20 June 1772, in JB Letters, Appendix V, p354

  81 JB Letters, Appendix V, p355

  82 Rev Wi
lliam Sheffield, letter to Gilbert White, 2 December 1772, from O’Brian, p168

  83 Daniel Solander, 16 November 1776, Collected Correspondence, edited by Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand, Scandinavia University Press, 1995, p373

  84 Carter, p153

  85 Gascoigne, p50

  86 Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004, p49

  87 O’Brian, p181

  88 Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Between Worlds: Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850, National Portrait Gallery, 2007

  89 British Academy Conference, 2006, my correspondence

  90 William Cowper, 6 October 1783

  91 William Cowper, The Task, 1784, Book 4, ‘The Winter Evening’, lines 107-19

  92 Ibid., Book 1, lines 654ff

  93 John Byng, quoted in Beaglehole, Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, 2 vols, 1962, pll4

  94 Gascoigne, p52

  95 Collingridge, Cook, 2002, pp405-15

  96 Gascoigne, p46

  97 Daniel Solander, 5 June 1779, Collected Correspondence, op. cit.

  98 Gascoigne, pl8

  99 O’Brian, p308

  100 Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne, 1989, pl61

  101 Patricia Fara, Joseph Banks: Sex, Botany and Empire, 2003, pp136-7

  102 Coleridge to Samuel Purkis, 1 February 1803, Collected Letters vol 2, p919

  103 JB Correspondence I, p331

  104 JB Letters, 16 November 1784, pp77-80

  105 Carter, pl21

  106 Gascoigne, p32

  107 Baron Cuvier, ‘Éloge on Sir Joseph Banks’, 1820, from Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Society, anonymous booklet, Royal Society, 1854, pp66-7

  Chapter 2: Herschel on the Moon

  1 WH Chronicle, p1

  2 Account from Herschel’s Journal in CHM, p42

  3 WH Chronicle, p73

  4 Account from CHA

  5 WH Papers 1; Armitage, p24

  6 Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900, CUP, 1986, p63

  7 WH Mss 6279; also WH Chronicle, p76

  8 WH Papers 1, pxc; also WH Chronicle, p77

  9 Herschel to Maskelyne, 12 June 1780, WH Papers 1, ppxc-xci

  10 CHM, p41

  11 CHM, p149