Literature, Electricity and Politics 1740–1840

Mary Fairclough is a Lecturer in the department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, UK. She is the author of The Romantic Crowd: Sympathy, Controversy and Print Culture (2013), and various articles on the intersection between literature, science and politics in the eighteenth century.

“This book is useful for those seeking to learn more about the personal, political, intellectual, and spiritual risks undertaken by those involved in the emergence of electrical discoveries and technologies. Literature, Electricity and Politics will interest scholars and students of the history and philosophy of science and intellectual history, as well as those eager to learn more about religious and political thought and the ideals of progress in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” (Jessica Hamel-Akré, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 31 (3), 2019)

• Introduction. Electricity, spectacle and figuration.- Chapter 1. Experiment, aether and the soul of the world.- Chapter 2. Electricital medicine, feeling and eroticism.- Chapter 3. Animal electricity, vitality, and revolution.- Chapter 4. Electrochemistry, matter and life.- Epilogue. Michael Faraday and a new electrical era.- Illustrations.- Bibliography.- Index.-