153 Maria Edgeworth, letter, 8 October 1802; from Lamont-Brown, p59
154 HD Archive Mss Box 13c p32; and Golinski, pp194-7
155 Coleridge to Southey, 17 February 1803, Collected Letters, vol 2, p490
156 Davy to Coleridge, March 1804; see Holmes, p360
157 Paris, vol 2, pp198-9
158 Ibid., p199
159 See Nicholas Roe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Sciences of Life, 2001, pp142-4
160 Partly reprinted in HD Works 5 and 8; lucidly discussed in Harold Hartley, Humphry Davy, Open University, 1966, pp50-74; and Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten
161 JD Memoirs, pp116-17
162 ‘Introduction to Electro-Chemical Science’, originally delivered March 1808, HD Works 8, pp274-305
163 HD Works 8, p281
164 HD Works 8; see Hartley, pp50-4
165 Treneer, p111
166 HD Works 5, pp59-61
167 Hartley, p56
168 Beddoes, 17 November 1808, from Stansfield, p239
169 Henry Brougham, ‘Three essays on Humphry Davy’, Edinburgh Review, 1808, vol 11: first pp390-8; second pp394-401; third pp483-90
170 Coleridge to Tom Poole, 24 November 1807
171 Treneer, p104
172 JD Memoirs, p117; HD Works 8, p355
173 HD Archive, quoted in Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, p119
174 Written after Recovery from a Dangerous Illness’, printed in JD Memoirs, pp114-16
175 Consolations in Travel, 1830, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5
176 Ibid., p255
177 JD Memoirs, pp394, 397
178 Consolations, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5. The story of Josephine Dettela, 1827-29, will be continued in my Chapter 9
179 Stansfield, pp194-5
180 Davy to Coleridge, December 2008, Collected Letters, vol 3, pp170-1; Treneer, p113
181 Stansfield, p247
182 HD Archive Mss Box 14 (i), note dated February 1829, Rome. See also Stansfield, p249
183 British Public Characters, 1804-5 (1809), British Library catalogue 10818.d. 1
184 Anna Barbauld, ‘The Year 1811’ (1812)
185 Coleridge’s note, 1809, in Notebooks, vol 2, entry no. 1855
186 HD Works 8, p354
Chapter 7: Dr Frankenstein and the Soul
1 Fanny Burney, A Mastectomy’, 30 September 1811, in the The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay), vol 6, edited by Joyce Hemlow, Oxford, 1975, pp596-616
2 Ibid., p600, footnote
3 Druin Burch, Digging up the Dead: The Life and Times of Astley Cooper, Chatto & Windus, 2007, p179. Besides much else, Burch has a chastening section on concepts of pain endurance, anaesthesia and surgery at this period, pp172-82
4 JB Correspondence 5, no. 1616
5 Sharon Ruston, Shelley and Vitality, Palgrave, 2005, p39
6 See Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998
7 John Hunter, 1794, from Ruston, p40
8 John Abernethy, Enquiry into Mr Hunter’s Theory of Life: Two Lectures, 1814 and 1815, p38; and Ruston, p43
9 Abernethy, Enquiry, pp48-50
10 Ruston, p45
11 Gascoigne, Banks and the English Enlightenment, pp157-9
12 See Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter J. Kitson, ‘Exploration, Headhunting and Race Theory’, in Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era, CUP, 2004
13 Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, p290
14 See Shelley’s Prose, edited by David Lee Clark
15 Holmes, Shelley, pp286-90; also Ruston, pp91-100
16 Ruston, p193
17 William Lawrence, Natural History of Man, 1819, pp6-7
18 William Lawrence, Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, 1816, pp169-70; and Ruston, p50
19 William Lawrence: The Natural History of Man (Lectures on Physiology and Zoology), 1819, p106
20 Ibid., p8; and Ruston, pp15-16
21 Lawrence, Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, p174; and Ruston, p16
22 In his letters of 1797-98, and later Notebooks. See Holmes, ‘Kubla Coleridge’, in Coleridge: Early Visions
23 Hermione de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats, OUP, 1991, pp66-73
24 Holmes, ‘The Coleridge Experiment’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol 69, 1998, p312
25 Nicholas Roe, ‘John Thelwall’s Essay on Animal Vitality’, in The Politics of Nature, Palgrave, 2002, p89
26 Burch, Digging up the Dead, 2007
27 Thelwall, ‘Essay towards a Definition of Animal Vitality’, 1793, quoted in Nicholas Roe, The Politics of Nature, pp89-91
28 Blagden to Banks, 27 December 1802, JB Correspondence 5, no. 1704
29 G Aldini, An Account of the Late Improvements in Galvanism … Containing the Author’s Experiments on the Body of a Malefactor Executed at Newgate, London, 1803; see Fred Botting (editor), New Casebooks: Frankenstein, Palgrave, 1995, p125
30 Quarterly Review, 1819, from Frankenstein, Oxford World Classics, pp243-50
31 B.R. Haydon, Diary, 1817; Penelope Hughes-Hallett, The Immortal Dinner, 2000; Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry, pp50-5
32 Quoted by Burch, pp154-5. For a darker view of dissection see Helen MacDonald, Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories, Yale UP, 2006
33 Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit, pp360–1
34 ‘Theory of Life’ (1816), in Coleridge: Shorter Works and Fragments, edited by H.J. and J.R. Jackson, vol 1, Princeton, 1995, p502
35 Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, 1998, p479
36 Hermione de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats, p102
37 Coleridge to Wordsworth, 30 May 1815, Coleridge Collected Letters 4, pp574-5
38 Richard Burton quoted in Andrew Motion, Keats, p430
39 John Keats, ‘Lamia’ (1820), lines 229-38
40 Ibid., lines 47-60
41 Ibid., lines 249-53
42 Ibid., lines 146-60
43 Davy’s ‘Discourse Introductory to Lectures on Chemistry, 1802, HD Works 2, pp311-26
44 Frankenstein, 1818, Chapter 2, Penguin Classics
45 Mary Shelley’s Journal, 25 August-5 September 1814
46 In September 1815 at Great Marlow; see Holmes, Shelley, p296
47 Mary Shelley, ‘Introduction’ to Frankenstein 1831 text
48 Frankenstein, 1818, Chapter 1, Penguin Classics
49 JB Correspondence 5, no. 1804
50 J.H. Ritter as featured in www.CorrosionDoctors
51 Walter Wetzels, ‘Ritter and Romantic Physics’, in Romanticism and the Sciences, edited by Cunningham and Jardine, 1990. The best account of the extraordinary writer Novalis appears in Penelope Fitzgerald’s inspired novel The Blue Flower, 1995
52 JB Correspondence 5, no. 1748, pp316-17
53 Ibid., no. 1790, p368
54 Ibid., no. 1799, p387
55 For a wider perspective see ‘Death, Dying and Resurrection’, in Peter Hanns Reill, Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment, California UP, 2005, pp171-6
56 Frankenstein, 1818, vol 1, Chapter 5, Penguin Classics, p56
57 These connections are further traced by Ruston, pp86-95
58 Lawrence, Lectures, 1817, pp6-7
59 Frankenstein, 1818, vol 2, Chapter 3, Penguin Classics, pp99-100
60 Ibid., Chapter 8, p132
61 Ibid., Chapter 9, pp140-1
62 Ibid., Chapter 9, p141
63 Ibid., vol 3, Chapter 2, p160
64 Ibid., Chapter 3, p160
65 Ibid., pp164-5
66 Frankenstein, 1831 text, pp178, 180, 186. My italics
67 Ibid., p189
68 Text from 1823 leaflet about Presumption; see Fred Botting (editor), New Casebooks: Frankenstein, Palgrave, 1995. The evolution and impact of the novel is brilliantly disclosed by William St Clair in The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, OUP, 2004
69 Mary Shelley, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol 1, edited by Betty T Bennett, Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, pp369, 378
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70 Frankenstein, 1818, vol 2, Chapter 5, Penguin Classics, pp116-17
71 Lawrence, On the Natural History of Man, 1819, p150
72 Ruston, p71
73 Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Medicine in Radical London, Chicago, 1989, p112
Chapter 8: Davy and the Lamp
1 Jane Apreece to Walter Scott, 4 March 1811, in ‘Lady Davy’s Letters’, edited by James Parker, The Quarterly Review, January 1962; also Lamont-Brown, p94
2 For example: ‘Whene’er you speak, Heaven! how the listening throng/ Dwell on the melting music of your tongue! …’ (Valentine’s Day 1805), HD Archive Box 26 File H II
3 Treneer, p119
4 See ‘iconography’ for Lady Davy (Jane Apreece) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. At the time of going to press I am still searching for a portrait, having exhausted all leads kindly provided by the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; and Christie’s, London
5 HD Archive Mss Box 25, containing ninety letters from Lady Davy 1811-22
6 HD Archive Mss Box 25/1
7 HD Archive Mss Box 25/3
8 HD Archive Mss Box 25/2
9 Raymond Lamont-Brown, Humphry Davy: Life Beyond the Lamp, Sutton, 2004, p94
10 HD Archive Mss Box 25/3; 13; 18; 20
11 HD Archive Mss Box 25/6
12 Coleridge letter of 28 May 1809; also Treneer, p113
13 HD Archive Mss Box 25/5 (1 November 1811)
14 HD Archive Mss Box 25/11; and Treneer, p124
15 HD Archive Mss Box 25/25 (March 1812)
16 HD Archive Mss Box 25/4; also Lamont-Brown, pp96-7
17 HD Archive Mss Box 25/4
18 ‘Lady Davy’s Letters’, edited by James Parker, The Quarterly Review, January 1962, p81
19 HD Archive Mss Box 25/26
20 HD Archive Mss Box 25/24; further details Lamont-Brown, pp90-105
21 Thorpe, p162
22 Banks to John Lloyd FRS, 31 March 1812; from June Z. Fullmer, ‘The Poetry of Sir Humphry Davy’, in Chymia, 6, 1960, p114
23 Treneer, p126
24 HD Works 2
25 JD Fragments, p158
26 Holmes, Shelley, p153
27 Thomas De Quincey, ‘The Poetry of Pope’, 1848. He gave Newton’s Principia as an example of Knowledge, and Milton’s Paradise Lost as example of Power. De Quincey also published a number of essays on scientific subjects, notably ‘Animal Magnetism’ (1833), ‘Kant and Dr Herschel’ (1819) and ‘The Planet Mars’ (1819)
28 HD Works 4, pp1-40
29 Ibid., p20
30 Ibid., pp1-2
31 Golinski, p262
32 Consolations, Dialogue V, ‘The Chemical Philosopher’, HD Works 9
33 Coleridge in Notebook 23 (1812), quoted by Trevor H. Levere, Chemists in Society 1770-1878, 1994, pp363-4
34 Coleridge’s Marginalia on Jakob Boehme (c.1810-11), from ibid., p357
35 See Coleridge’s letter to Lord Liverpool, 28 July 1817, discussing Davy versus Dalton (‘atomist’), Collected Letters, vol 4, p760
36 JD Fragments, p174
37 Ibid., p175
38 HD Archive Mss Box 25/31
39 Treneer, p134
40 Ibid., p133
41 Ibid., p137
42 Hamilton, pp119, 207
43 Jane Marcet, Conversations in Chemistry, 2 vols, 1813, vol 1, p342
44 Treneer, p138
45 HD Archive Mss Box 25/33
46 HD Archive Mss Box 25/27
47 HD Archive Mss Box 25/28
48 HD Archive Mss Box 25/36
49 Kerrow Hill, The Brontë Sisters and Sir Humphry Davy, Penzance, 1994, p16
50 HD Archive Mss Box 25/34
51 Paris, vol 2, pp59-72
52 JD Memoirs, p163
53 Michael Faraday, ‘Observations on Mental Education’, 1859; quoted in James Hamilton, Faraday: The Life, HarperCollins, 2002, p1. See also striking portraits and photographs of Faraday dated 1829, 1831 and c.1850 (National Portrait Gallery)
54 Lamont-Brown, pp110-26
55 Paris, vol 1, p261
56 Leigh Hunt, Examiner, 24 October 1813
57 JD Fragments, p190
58 Michael Faraday, Correspondence 1811-1831, vol 1, edited Frank A.L.J. James, Institute of Electrical Engineers, 1991, p127
59 Maurice Crosland, ‘Davy and Gay Lussac’, in Sophie Forgan (editor), Science and the Sons of Genius (essays), 1980, pp103-8
60 Faraday, Correspondence, p124
61 JD Memoirs, pp172-7; and Hartley, p107
62 Hartley, pp107-8
63 Faraday, Correspondence, p101
64 HD Works 1, p218
65 Ibid., p217
66 Ibid., p220
67 Faraday, Correspondence, p117
68 Ibid., 23 February 1815, p126
69 Treneer, p175; from Ticknor, Memoirs
70 HD Works 1, p235
71 Paris, vol 2, p79
72 J.H. Holmes, Accidents in Coal Mines, London, 1816, pp141-2
73 ‘Report of the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines’, in Parliamentary Papers, 1835, vol 5, September 1835
74 Faraday, Correspondence, p136
75 Bence Jones, Life and Letters of Faraday, vol 1, p361
76 Paris, vol 2, p95
77 Ibid., p82
78 JB Letters, p317
79 Paris, vol 2, p97
80 Letter to John Hodgson, 29 December 1815, Northumberland Record Office; from 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, p197
81 Frank James, pp185-93
82 HD, On the Safety Lamp, with Some Researches into Flame, 1818; and HD Works 6, pp12-14
83 HD Works 6, p4
84 Coleridge, The Friend (1818 edition), in The Friend, vol 1, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Routledge, 1969, pp 530-1
85 Coleridge, The Friend (1809 edition), no. 19, 1809; in The Friend, vol 2, edited by Barbara E. Rooke, Routledge, 1969, pp251-2
86 Frank James, p197
87 John Buddle’s evidence (2nd day), Report of the Select Committee, 1835, pp153-4
88 HD Works 6, pp116-17
89 Lamont-Brown, p112
90 Thorpe, p203
91 Paris, vol 2, p111
92 ‘Igna Constructo Securitas…’ Davy’s coat of arms illustrated in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1829
93 John Playfair, ‘Sir Humphry Davy’s Lamp’, in Edinburgh Review, no. LI, 1816, p233; also Thorpe, p204
94 HD Works 6, pp6-7
95 Ibid., p22, footnote
96 Ibid., p4
97 Hamilton, pp121-5; Lamont-Brown, pp128-33
98 James Heaton demonstration at the Society of Arts, 1817, described in Report of the Select Committee, 1835, p213
99 A Collection of all Letters in Newcastle papers relating to Safety Lamps, London, 1817. See British Library catalogue Tracts 8708.i.2
100 Letter from George Stephenson, ibid., Tracts 8708.i.2(5)
101 Treneer, p172
102 Lettter to Lord Lambton, October 1816, in Paris, vol 2, p120
103 Frank James, p203
104 Paris, vol 2, p123
105 See Hamilton, pp122-3
106 Frank James, pp183-95
107 HD Works 6
108 Paris, vol 2, p122
109 Ibid., p124-5; and from David Knight, Davy, p113
110 HD Works 1, pp209-10
111 Paris, vol 2, p129
112 Treneer, pp173-4; Thorpe, p208
113 Minute Book of Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, December 1817, from Frank James, p211
114 ‘Report of the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines’, in Parliamentary Papers, 1835, vol 5, September 1835
115 Ibid., pviii
116 Ibid.
117 Davy boys described in ibid., pp97-108,
165-7. See also Samuel Smiles, Life of George Stephenson, 1859; and Newcastle Public Record Office
118 Walter Scott, Journals 1, 1826, p109
119 JD Fragments, pp141-3
120 Sun Fire Office insurance document, 4 June 1818, found through internet UK Archives Network
121 HD, On the Safety Lamp for Preventing Explosions, London, 1825, p151
122 Consolations, Dialogue II, HD Works 9, pp254-5
123 Ibid., p255
124 JD Life 2, pp114-15; and JD Memoirs, pp251-3
125 Shelley, Epipsychidion, 1820, lines 190-221 (extract)
126 Byron, letter to John Murray, April 1820; see Treneer, p182
127 Byron, Don Juan I (1819), stanza 132
Chapter 9: Sorcerer and Apprentice
1 JB Correspondence 6, p286
2 JB, August 1816, ibid., pp208-9
3 Ibid., p382
4 JB, November 1814, ibid., p152
5 Gunther Buttman, In the Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel, Lutterworth Press, 1974, p13
6 JB Correspondence 6, p375
7 Ibid.
8 JB Correspondence 6, 1819
9 Coleridge ‘Youth and Age’ (1825), in Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, p215
10 November 1817, JB Correspondence 6, p252
11 Byron, ‘Darkness’, written at the Villa Diodati, July 1816. See Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend, John Murray, 2002, p69; and discussed in New Penguin Romantic Poetry, edited by Jonathan and Jessica Wordsworth, Notes to Poems, p909
12 JB Correspondence 6, September and November 1819, pp355, 367
13 Gascoigne, p52
14 JB Correspondence 6, March 1818, p276
15 Ibid., November 1818, p325
16 Ibid., September 1819, p359
17 Byron, Don Juan (1821), Canto 10, lines 1-24. The ‘glass and vapour’ refer to telescopes and steamships, and also possibly balloons. The ringing phrase ‘In the Wind’s Eye’ was used by modern editors as the title of vol 6 of Byron’s Collected Letters
18 JB Correspondence 6, August 1816, p209
19 Gascoigne, p41
20 Ibid.
21 Buttman, p13
22 CHM, pp119-21
23 John Herschel to Babbage, October 1813, quoted in Buttman, p14
24 William Herschel to John, 10 November 1813, WH Mss 6278 1/11
25 Lady Herschel to John, 14 November 1813, ibid.
26 John Herschel to Babbage, March 1815, quoted by Buttman, p16
27 JB Correspondence 6, p375
28 Shelley, ‘Notes to Queen Mab’ (1812)