This dissertation project operates on the belief that the democratic, everyday pursuits of science were at least as significant scientifically, and perhaps even more important culturally, as the elite, highly speculative work done by the gentlemen scientists of the Romantic Age (1790-1830). It focuses upon the literary works, careers, and discourse of Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Marcet, tracing the role that gender played in assigning recognition and authority in the scientific community. Operating in a public sphere that favored the scientific discoveries of male gentlemen scientists, boundary crossing had to occur decisively, but quietly through a method of subversion and containment. Women had to enter the scientific conversation through traditionally unscientific genres and anonymous or apologetic prefaces, which usually conveyed intent to share science with other women. I explore the problem they all faced, in trying to recount science to a broader audience; I document how and why they responded to each other and toward the changing public sphere's positioning of science. For these reasons, the Romantic Age’s collaboratives of gentlemen scientists significantly influenced how their popularizing contemporaries, specifically women, responded to science and how, as a result, elitism further diversified the pursuit of science. Each author’s presentation of expertise demonstrates the role of popular writings on the sciences in redefining scientific authority. These authors are representative of the two-sided struggle to make science more elite and more popular; and regardless of their allegiance in this struggle, each attempted to make science more accessible. This dissertation explores the tenuous relationship between the professions of authorship and science, highlighting the communication of both scientific discoveries and applications through writing as another facet of scientific practice. Elite gentlemen scientists’ perceptions of others as authors reflect their own self-fashioning of the professional identity of scientific writer, and popularizers of science synthesized scientific information as they learned it themselves, thereby forging a new worldview.
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Book
Dahlia Porter;
(2018)
Science, Form, and the Problem of Induction in British Romanticism
(/isis/citation/CBB734911585/)
Thesis
Goldstein, Amanda Jo;
(2011)
“Sweet Science”: Romantic Materialism and the New Sciences of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001567306/)
Book
Amanda Jo Goldstein;
(2017)
Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life
(/isis/citation/CBB350652099/)
Article
Thomas Bullington;
(2020)
Analogies from the Vegetable Creation: The Botanical Logic of Edgeworth's Belinda
(/isis/citation/CBB488879997/)
Book
Stock, John Edmonds;
(2003)
Memoirs of Thomas Beddoes, M. D
(/isis/citation/CBB000330959/)
Thesis
Kleinneiur, Joann;
(2007)
The Chemical Revolution in British Poetry, 1772--1822
(/isis/citation/CBB001560620/)
Thesis
Allard, James Robert;
(2002)
“Bare of Laurel”: The Poet's Body and the Romantic Poet-Physician
(/isis/citation/CBB001562269/)
Article
Budge, Gavin;
(2007)
Erasmus Darwin and the Poetics of William Wordsworth: “Excitement without the Application of Gross and Violent Stimulants”
(/isis/citation/CBB001032680/)
Book
Devin Griffiths;
(2016)
The Age of Analogy: Science and Literature between the Darwins
(/isis/citation/CBB301678327/)
Book
Mahood, M. M.;
(2008)
The Poet as Botanist
(/isis/citation/CBB000952173/)
Book
Page, Michael R.;
(2012)
The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells: Science, Evolution, and Ecology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320100/)
Thesis
Michael Verderame;
(2017)
Science, Politics, and Soul-Making: The Romantic Encounter with Climate Change
(/isis/citation/CBB568976028/)
Book
Chaouli, Michel;
(2002)
The Laboratory of Poetry: Chemistry and Poetics in the Work of Friedrich Schlegel
(/isis/citation/CBB000302223/)
Book
Dean, Dennis R.;
(2007)
Romantic Landscapes: Geology and Its Cultural Influence in Britain, 1765--1835
(/isis/citation/CBB000774364/)
Thesis
Rispoli, Stephanie Adair;
(2014)
Anatomy, Vitality, and the Romantic Body: Blake, Coleridge, and the Hunter Circle, 1750--1840
(/isis/citation/CBB001567614/)
Book
Kuhn, Bernhard Helmut;
(2009)
Autobiography and Natural Science in the Age of Romanticism: Rousseau, Goethe, Thoreau
(/isis/citation/CBB000952156/)
Book
Holmes, Richard;
(2008)
The Age of Wonder
(/isis/citation/CBB001024401/)
Article
Morton, Timothy;
(1998)
The Pulses of the Body: Romantic Vegetarianism and Its Contexts
(/isis/citation/CBB000952598/)
Book
Heringman, Noah;
(2003)
Romantic Science: The Literary Forms of Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB000773755/)
Book
Sha, Richard C.;
(2009)
Perverse Romanticism: Aesthetics and Sexuality in Britain, 1750--1832
(/isis/citation/CBB001031399/)
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