Fara, Patricia (Author)
Dr Erasmus Darwin seemed an innocuous Midlands physician, a respectable stalwart of eighteenth-century society. But there was another side to him. Botanist, inventor, Lunar inventor and popular poet, Darwin was internationally renowned for breathtakingly long poems explaining his theories about sex and science. Yet he become a target for the political classes, the victim of a sustained and vitriolic character assassination by London's most savage satirists. Intrigued, prize-winning historian Patricia Fara set out to investigate why Darwin had provoked such fierce intellectual and political reaction. Inviting her readers to accompany her, she embarked on what turned out to be a circuitous and serendipitous journey. Her research led her to discover a man who possessed, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'perhaps a greater range of knowledge than any other man in Europe.' His evolutionary ideas influenced his grandson Charles, were banned by the Vatican, and scandalized his reactionary critics. But for modern readers, he shines out as an impassioned Enlightenment reformer who championed the abolition of slavery, the education of women, and the optimistic ideals of the French Revolution. As she tracks down her quarry, Patricia Fara uncovers a ferment of dangerous ideas that terrified the establishment, inspired the Romantics, and laid the ground for Victorian battles between faith and science.
...MoreEssay Review Mollendorf, Miranda (2014) A Familar Tale of Erasmus Darwin Told in a Fresh Way. Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 183-186).
Article
List, Julia;
(2009)
Erasmus Darwin's Beautification of the Sublime: Materialism, Religion and the Reception of The Economy of Vegetation in the Early 1790s
(/isis/citation/CBB001032687/)
Thesis
Goldstein, Amanda Jo;
(2011)
“Sweet Science”: Romantic Materialism and the New Sciences of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001567306/)
Book
Mahood, M. M.;
(2008)
The Poet as Botanist
(/isis/citation/CBB000952173/)
Book
Amanda Jo Goldstein;
(2017)
Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB350652099/)
Article
Sam George;
(2014)
Carl Linnaeus, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward: Botanical Poetry and Female Education
(/isis/citation/CBB189590852/)
Thesis
Kleinneiur, Joann;
(2007)
The Chemical Revolution in British Poetry, 1772--1822
(/isis/citation/CBB001560620/)
Article
Marshall, Ashley;
(2007)
Erasmus Darwin contra David Hume
(/isis/citation/CBB001032681/)
Chapter
Elliott, Paul;
(2012)
Erasmus Darwin's Trees
(/isis/citation/CBB001421358/)
Book
Priestman, Martin;
(2013)
The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin: Enlightened Spaces, Romantic Times
(/isis/citation/CBB001552321/)
Book
Devin Griffiths;
(2016)
The Age of Analogy: Science and Literature between the Darwins
(/isis/citation/CBB301678327/)
Thesis
Bridget E. Kapler;
(2016)
Gendering Scientific Discourse from 1790-1830: Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet
(/isis/citation/CBB101715752/)
Book
Page, Michael R.;
(2012)
The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells: Science, Evolution, and Ecology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320100/)
Book
Dahlia Porter;
(2018)
Science, Form, and the Problem of Induction in British Romanticism
(/isis/citation/CBB734911585/)
Article
MacKenzie, Scott R.;
(2014)
Sexual Arithmetic: Appetite and Consumption in The Way of the World
(/isis/citation/CBB001201791/)
Book
Eric Gidal;
(2015)
Ossianic Unconformities: Bardic Poetry in the Industrial Age
(/isis/citation/CBB803057285/)
Book
Emilio Filieri;
(2021)
Calamo e nuova scienza fra Galileo e Parini
(/isis/citation/CBB771803111/)
Chapter
Stefania Baragetti;
(2022)
Il «vero sistema del mondo»: la scienza nell’Arcadia di Gioacchino Pizzi
(/isis/citation/CBB380009790/)
Book
Lynall, Gregory;
(2012)
Swift and Science: The Satire, Politics, and Theology of Natural Knowledge, 1690--1730
(/isis/citation/CBB001252468/)
Article
Fara, Patricia;
Money, David;
(2004)
Isaac Newton and Augustan Anglo-Latin Poetry
(/isis/citation/CBB000471156/)
Thesis
Hartendorf-Wallach, Bregtje;
(2011)
“Le Spectacle de la Nature, or, Nature Display'd”: The Spectacularization of Nature in Eighteenth-Century France and England
(/isis/citation/CBB001567329/)
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