The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science [Paperback]

'Exuberant… Holmes suffuses his book with the joy, hope and wonder of the revolutionary era. Reading it is like a holiday in a sunny landscape, full of fascinating bypaths that lead to unexpected vistas… it succeeds inspiringly'’ John Carey, Sunday Times

‘I am a Richard Holmes addict. He is an incomparable biographer, but in The Age of Wonder, he rises to new heights and becomes the biographer not of a single figure, but of an entire unique period, when artist and scientist could share common aims and ambitions and a common language … Only Holmes, who is so deeply versed in the people and culture of eighteenth-century science, could tell their story with such verve and resonance for our own time.’ Oliver Sacks

'"The Age of Wonder" gives us… a new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigorating, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful' Jenny Uglow, Guardian

'This is a book to linger over, to savour the tantalising details of the minor figures… "The Age of Wonder" allows readers to recapture the combined thrill of emerging scientific order and imaginative creativity’ Lisa Jardine, Financial Times

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'If the art of biography was ever damned, Shelley: The Pursuit redeemed it.' New York Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” Wordsworth recalled, thinking of the fall of the Bastille in 1789. But Richard Holmes's exuberant group biography celebrates the scientific revolution that preceded and outsoared the political one, changing life, the universe and everything in the last decades of the 18th century… Holmes suffuses his book with the joy, hope and wonder of the revolutionary era. Reading it is like a holiday in a sunny landscape, full of fascinating bypaths that lead to unexpected vistas. He believes that we must engage the minds of young people with science by writing about it in a new way, entering imaginatively into the biographies of individual scientists and showing what makes them just as creative as poets, painters and musicians. The Age of Wonder is offered, with due modesty, as a model, and it succeeds inspiringly’ John Carey, Sunday Times ‘The Age of Wonder gives us...a new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigorating, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful’ Jenny Uglow, Guardian ‘vividly conveys the compelling fusion of art and science in the 18th century...this is a book to linger over, to savour the tantalising details of the minor figures...The Age of Wonder allows readers to recapture the combined thrill of emerging scientific order and imaginative creativity’ Lisa Jardine, Financial Times ‘If ever there was an argument for a biographical analysis of complex scientific and technological history, this is it...well paced and rich in detail...Heartbreaking accounts of hope and fears, ambitions and disappointments dance along the pages. Even the choice of pictures gives us new insights into old favourites...There is no dry page in this visceral, spirited and sexy account’ The Times ‘Richard Holmes's stellar collective biography...gives a gripping account of the scientific research that inspired a sense of wonder in poets and experimenters alike....fascinating...this beautifully crafted book deserves all the praise it will undoubtedly attract. Well-researched and vividly written The Age of Wonder will fascinate scientists and poets alike’ Literary Review ‘Holmes triumphantly shows the Romantic age was one of symbiosis rather than opposition...no biographer is better than Holmes at evoking the thrill of the chase....elegant ....fascinating...entrancing’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Exhilarating...instructive and delightful...finely observed...generous and hugely enjoyable’ Daily Telegraph ‘Romanticism and Science are justly reunited in Richard Holmes's new book....a revelation....thrilling’ Independent --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

`beautifully written, carrying you along like the great Pacific rollers that swept the young Joseph Banks to unknown Tahiti.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'...splendidly thoughtful and thought-provoking: a delight.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, Richard Holmes’s dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement.

The book opens with Joseph Banks, botanist on Captain Cook’s first Endeavour voyage, who stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769 fully expecting to have located Paradise. Back in Britain, the same Romantic revolution that had inspired Banks was spurring other great thinkers on to their own voyages of artistic and scientific discovery – astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical – that together made up the ‘age of wonder’.

In this breathtaking group biography, Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period’s celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries: from telescopic sight to the miner’s lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration.

AIMS AND MOTIVATIONS

1. "My books on Shelley and Coleridge are all about people who had hope in the world. Now come [in Age of Wonder] the scientists and the discovery of a new kind of hope." [Guardian interview] Is this – the sense of hope shared by Romantic scientists and artists – what prompted you to shift from literary biography to history of science?
Yes. One of the glories of the Romantic period for me is its sense of hope and energy, of wider possibilities, of a better world. I also hate the stultifying idea of the Two Cultures – arts and sciences – supposedly dividing us. The Romantics didn’t believe in such a division. In fact the specific thing that set me off was the friendship between the poet Coleridge (whose biography I had written) and the chemist Humphry Davy. It is a fascinating story, ranging from their inhaling of nitrous oxide gas together, to discussing the hardest metaphysical questions about the nature of scientific knowledge and its role in society .

2. You write in Age of Wonder that you aim to "present scientific passion, so much of which is summed up in that child-like, but infinitely complex word, wonder" [xx]. Did you aim to present the methods of scientists as well as "passion" behind their work?
Yes, and these methods are not at all child-like. They were original, daring and often highly dangerous. To start with, the principles of close observation, accurate measurement, and precise experiment pioneered by the scientists – incidentally not defined as “scientists” until 1833 – are intellectually gripping in themselves. But there’s the physical equipment they used, and often invented – like Herschel’s homemade reflectors, or Davy’s voltaic batteries, or Banks’s exquisite anthropological (as well as botanical) drawings, or Blanchard’s balloon canopies and barometers. Then there’s the story of their actual experiments, explorations and discoveries, which make thrilling narratives in themselves…

3. Did you use any other writers on the history of science, or works in the field, as models for this book? Is so, what/who were they?
Not really, I felt I was trying to do something quite new in this form of group biography. Indeed it was a long and lonely business. Nonetheless there were books which deeply encouraged me, and which I admire greatly: James Gleick on Newton, Lisa Jardine on 17th century science in Ingenious Pursuits, and Jenny Uglow on the 18th century Lunar Men. There were also certain radio and television programmes which inspired me by the way complex ideas could be discussed and clarified: Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time for instance, and Sir David Attenborough’s brilliant nature programmes.

4. "We need not only a new history of science, but a more enlarged and imaginative biographical writing about individual scientists" [Age of Wonder, 468]. Do you have some individual scientists in mind who deserve more biographical attention?
I think the biography of scientists is only just starting. For example, Mike Jay’s biography of the 18th century doctor Thomas Beddoes, or Graham Farmelo’s of the 20th century physicist Paul Dirac, or Georgina Ferry’s of the molecular biologist Max Perutz. Most of all there is the need for fuller biographies of women in science, especially during the early modern period: the Duchess of Newcastle, Emilie du Chatelet, Mary Anning, Mary Somerville, Caroline Herschel, Jane Marcet, or Margaret Huggins for example.


BIOGRAPHICAL METHOD

1.You have described biography as a union of fiction and fact, "without benefit of clergy" [Inventing the Truth, 15]. Did your previous experience of marrying fact and fiction (in your works of literary biography) make it easier for you to marry Romantic science with Romantic art (in this book)?
No, I felt I was starting from scratch. It’s not so much “marrying” fact and fiction, as using fictional techniques to get across facts and present them in a revealing way. I’ll give you two examples of this. One is the use of Joseph Banks as a kind of Greek chorus throughout the book. The second is the method of starting each scientific life in the middle, when something significant has already happened, and only going back to the childhood later – to see how he or she got to that significant place. If you look in the book, you will see how these work.

2. "Empathy is the most powerful, the most necessary, and the most deceptive, of all biographical emotions" [Sidetracks]. As a writer, did you find it harder to empathise with the scientists in this history than with the writers? If this was a problem for you, how did you overcome it?
I’m not sure about this. The question of “empathy” – and in what sense it really exists, as opposed to “sympathy” – is a difficult one for all biographers. I suppose there can be a problem about understanding the inner life of scientists, who may not be so naturally inclined to confide their thoughts to letters, journals or diaries as professional writers. Biographers might call this “a lack of interiority”. On the other hand, scientists tend to have a natural gift for explaining things, including the way they have approached and solved (or failed to solve, potentially just as interesting) particular scientific problems. There is a great and growing interest in the informal Notebooks of scientists – for example the Notebooks of Leonardo, Newton and Charles Darwin have all been published and are classics – just like the Notebooks of Coleridge.

3. There is a fashion, in history of science writing, for biographies about non-human subjects, whether equations (E = mc2) or entities (quarks, flies, electrons). Can you imagine writing this kind of biography, or is the human element indispensable for you? No, the human heart is indispensable. Samuel Johnson said he could “write the life of a broomstick”, but I couldn’t. Mind you Shelley wrote the life of a single cloud in a long poem of that name, and it is scientifically impressive on the convection cycle as well as biographically beautiful.

4. The Age of Wonder has reached a much larger readership than typical histories of science. Why do you think this is?
I think it’s because we are probably entering a golden age of popular science writing, for quite complex reasons… But it has struck me that in lectures, and in the signing queue afterwards, my readers seem more evenly balanced between men and women, and definitely younger than before. But then that’s probably because I’m definitely older than before.

5. Do you have plans for another book? If so, do you plan to write again on the Romantic period? On science?
No time to lose! Already hard at work!

When Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1796, he hoped to discover Paradise. The young botanist had set sail in search of new worlds – inspired by the Romantic revolution of science that was sweeping through Britain.

In this ground-breaking group biography, award-winning author Richard Holmes charts the voyages of discovery – astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical – that made up this ‘age of wonder’. From telescopic sight to the miner’s lamp, and from the first balloon flight to African exploration, it tells the stories of great innovations, and the inspired individuals behind them.

Breathtaking in its originality and storytelling energy, The Age of Wonder is a radical vision of the meeting places of science and art, and an extraordinary evocation of an era of exploration, discovery and wonder.

‘Witty, intellectually dazzling and wholly gripping’ Richard Mabey, Guardian, Books of the Year

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Richard Holmes is a Fellow of the British Academy, and was Professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia (2001–2007). He was awarded the OBE in 1992. His first book, ‘Shelley: The Pursuit’, won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1974. ‘Coleridge: Early Visions’ won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and ‘Dr Johnson and Mr Savage’ won the James Tait Black Prize. ‘Coleridge: Darker Reflections’ won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Heinemann Award. He lives in London and Norfolk with the novelist Rose Tremain.