Science Writing in the Romantic Era 1770-1837

In 1802 Humphry Davy hailed a new era in which science was empowering mankind as never before: ‘it has’, he said, ‘bestowed upon him powers which may be almost called creative; which have enabled him to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations, but rather as a master, active with his own instruments.’ This statement, which Mary Shelley had in mind when she invented Victor Frankenstein, made of the scientist a Romantic, sublime figure – a dominant male who penetrated nature at will. It neatly epitomised the increased cultural authority that science acquired in the years 1770-1837; it also heralded a modern, industrial society that benefited from the technologies and treatments which organised science enabled, yet at the same time degraded the planet. As Davy knew, it was in the Romantic era that scientists pioneered vaccination – the technique that has saved millions from early death and tamed once fatal diseases; it was also in that era that they developed the carbon-burning machines that, in the process of driving the factory, the railway and the steamship, led to today’s climate change. This anthology will present cross-sections of the developments that Davy – and Mary Shelley – witnessed and predicted. It aims, that is to say, not only to offer a collection of great discoveries – especially those that impacted literature – but also to reveal some of the ways in which science came to power and how it began to achieve the status, for good and ill, that it possesses today.