Product Description

Richard Holmes, prize-winning biographer of Coleridge and Shelley, explores the scientific ferment that swept across Britain at the end of 18th century in his ground-breaking new biography 'The Age of Wonder'. 'The Age of Wonder' is Richard Holmes's first major work of biography in over a decade. It has been inspired by the scientific ferment that swept through Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, 'The Age of Wonder' and which Holmes now radically redefines as 'the revolution of Romantic Science'. The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook's first Endeavour voyage, stepping onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, hoping to discover Paradise. Many other voyages of discovery swiftly follow, while Banks, now President of the Royal Society in London, becomes our narrative guide to what truly emerges as an Age of Wonder. Banks introduces us to the two scientific figures that dominate the book: astronomer William Herschel and chemist Humphry Davy.Herschel's tireless dedication to the stars, assisted (and perhaps rivalled) by his comet-finding sister Caroline, changed forever the public conception of the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy and the meaning of the universe itself. Davy first shocked the scientific community with his near-suicidal gas experiments in Bristol, then went on to save thousands of lives with his Safety Lamp and established British chemistry as the leading professional science in Europe. But at the cost, perhaps, of his own heart. Holmes proposes a radical vision of science before Darwin, exploring the earliest ideas of deep time and deep space, the creative rivalry with the French scientific establishment, and the startling impact of discovery on great writers and poets such as Mary Shelley, Coleridge, Byron and Keats. With his trademark sense of the human drama, he shows how great ideas and experiments are born out of lonely passion, how scientific discoveries (and errors) are made, how intense relationships are forged and broken by research, and how religious faith and scientific truth collide.The result is breathtaking in its originality, its story-telling energy, and not least, in its intellectual significance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3315 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 380 pages

Praise for Coleridge: Early Visions
'One of the greatest literary biographies ever written.' Daily Telegraph

'Dazzling. A biography like few I have ever read.' James Wood, Guardian

Praise for Sidetracks
'A masterful study of the human heart - his, yours, mine - demonstrating that, in the right hands, biography can be the most dazzling literary form of all.' Sara Wheeler, Daily Telegraph

Praise for Shelley: The Pursuit
'If the art of biography was ever damned, Shelley: The Pursuit redeemed it.' New York Times

Customer Reviews

Outstanding
I was given this as a Christmas present. Richard Holmes crafts a fascinating story that brings fully to life the period covered (late 18th and early 19th centuries). I was hooked from the first page as the exploits, discoveries and tribulations of Joseph Banks, William and Caroline Herschel, Mungo Park, Humphry Davy and a cast of other leading 'scientists' were woven together in a wonderful tapestry (no pun intended). Richard Holmes' prose is fluent and captivating. This is one book that really lives up to the blurb on the cover. Read it!

A magnificent read
There are plenty books written on modern science, exploration (geographical and scientific), fledgling scientific breakthroughs, romantic poetry, human psychology and biographies of major scientific protagonists (with all their vanities and petty jealousies, as well as their soft, fuzzy side) - but all this in ONE book? It's a masterpiece, beautifully written, wittily observed and carefully footnoted. Every page a delight.

Comments by Michael Calum Jacques, author of '1st Century Radical'.
This reviewer found this work to be an altogether fascinating book, scanning and encompassing a myriad of topics and even ideas "heterogeneously yoked by violence together", cemented through the sheer quality and vivacity of the author's writing merits.

Holmes has been described as 'a literary traveller'. To risk being oversimplistic, and depending on one's own standpoint, this work deals with the the embracing of scientific principles by the Romantics or, for some, nearer to Johnson's definition, the collision of the two value systems and a resultant synthesis of sorts.

Like the Romantic poets themselves, the author also presents scientific research as comprising of a world of opportunities, as a type of challenging, new expedition. Holmes draws attention to William Wordsworth's depiction of Isaac Newton as a lonesome explorer and, indeed, Holmes goes actually on to label two huge expeditions as sorts of watermarks. viz. Captain James Cook's first encircling of the world, between 1768 and 1771, and Charles Darwin's celebrated voyage and research conducted on the Beagle, between 1831 and 1836.

These selections concentrate Holmes attention on what is chronicled elsewhere as having been an intensely noteworthy span of some 60 years when science became practised by 'professionals, not merely by rich, at ease 'amateurs' who happened to have the luxury of time at their disposal. Detailed examples from the book could fill the space and time available for this review and many more. The book is quite compendious in its stated field of interest but indulges in the study of particular subjects (human and topical ones) to ensure its depth.

Of course, the impact of science in the Victorian age (and beyond) has many more facets to it that one volume could ever hope to encompass. The impact of science upon faith, for example, especially upon Christian Faith, is a subject still yearning for greater definition and delineation.

The 550+, information and anecdote clad, pages to be found within 'The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science' by Richard Holmes, come strongly commended by this reviewer. It does 'all that it says on the cover' and far, far more besides. Richard Holmes has never written better and, if you've enjoyed his previous works, you'll find this an absorbing read.

Michael Calum Jacques (author of 1st Century Radical)