Book 0019
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Donated by Carole Patey, who says...
For me, a non-scientist with only a sketchy knowledge of such people as Humphrey Davy, William Herschel, Joseph Banks and their contemporaries, this book is a revelation. Holmes sets their scientific experiments and brilliant discoveries into the stories of their lives and the society in which they lived.
Poets, Shelley, Coleridge, Keats were their friends and collaborators. There’s even a chapter on Mary Shelley’s ‘invention’ of Frankenstein. And another on the first hot-air balloon! Herschel painstakingly building a telescope with the help of his equally brilliant sister and the anecdotes surrounding the effects of Davy’s laughing gas are the highlights. Enjoy!