The Lunar Men: The Inventors of the Modern World, 1730–1810

706 Pages·2011·20.93 MB·English

by  Jenny Uglow

THE LUNAR MEN

The Friends who made the Future
1730–1810

J
ENNY UGLOW
To Desmond King-Hele and Shena Mason
CONTENTS

Title Page
The Principal Lunar Men
Map of Lunar Society Places

WAXING
Prologue: ‘Surprise the world’

FIRST QUARTER

1 Earth, Elston & Electricity
2 Toys
3 Scotland
4 The Doctor’s Bag
5 Pots
6 Heading for Soho
7 Ingenious Philosophers
8 Reaching Out
9 Steam

SECOND QUARTER

10 They Build Canals
11 Painting the Light
12 Magic & Mechanics
13 Derbyshire Explorata
14 Chemical Reactions
15 Trials of Life
16 Rousseau & Romance
17 Vases, Ormolu, Silver & Frogs
18 Running the Show
19 Eddies

THIRD QUARTER

20 Experiments on Air
21 ‘What All the World Desires’
22 ‘Bandy’d Like a Shuttlecock’
23 Plants & Passions
24 Conquering Cornwall
25 Dull Earth & Shining Stones
26 Creative Copying
27 Sons & Daughters
28 Bringing on the Artists
29 From the Nation to the Land

FOURTH QUARTER

30 Fire
31 Boulton’s Blazing Skies
32 The Linnaean Row
33 Protecting Our Interests
34 Family & Feeling
35 Grand Projects
36 Turning
37 Riots
38 Handing On
39 ‘Fire Engines & Sundry Works’
40 ‘Time Is! Time Was! …’

WANING
Epilogue: ‘Fiddledum, Diddledum’

Chronology
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Sources
List of Illustrations
Index

Plates
About the Author
Copyright
THE PRINCIPAL LUNAR MEN
IN ORDER OF AGE

John Whitehurst (1713–1788)

Matthew Boulton (1728–1809)

Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795)

Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802)

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804)

William Small (1734–1775)

James Keir (1735–1820)

James Watt (1736–1819)

William Withering (1741–1799)

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817)

Thomas Day (1748–1789)

Samuel Galton (1753–1832)

WAXING

I shall never forget Mr Boulton’s expression to me: ‘I sell here, Sir, what all the
world desires to have — Power.’
James Boswell, 1774

’Twas in truth an hour
Of universal ferment; mildest men
Were agitated; and commotions, strife
Of passion and opinion fill’d the walls
Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.
The soil of common life was at that time
Too hot to tread upon; oft said I then,
And not then only, ‘what a mockery this
Of history; the past and that to come!’
William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805

There is universally something presumptuous in provincial genius.
Review of Joseph Priestley’s Memoirs, 1806
‘The Grand Orrery’, and a quotation from John Harris, Astronomical Dialogues,
1719