Description
Book SynopsisDr Erasmus Darwin seemed an innocuous Midlands physician, a respectable stalwart of eighteenth-century society. But there was another side to him. Botanist, physician, Lunar inventor and popular poet, Darwin was internationally renowned for extraordinary poems explaining his theories about sex and science. Yet he became 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 cri
Trade ReviewErasmus Darwin [...] subverts the genre, along the way making it the most enjoyable relatively heavy-duty history of science book I've ever read ... this is a wonderful way to make the process of exploring the history of science come alive. * Brian Clegg, Popular Science *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Serendipity The Love of Triangles 1: Erasmus Darwin 2: 'The Loves of the Triangles' 3: A Triangle of Poets The Loves of the Plants 4: The Loves of the Plants 5: Women on Trial 6: Seraglios The Economy of Vegetation 7: The Lunar Society 8: The Economy of Vegetation 9: The Triangular Slave Trade The Temple of Nature 10: Defining People 11: The Temple of Nature 12: Origins Conclusion: Reputations and Reflections Appendix: 'The Loves of the Triangles' Notes Bibliography Index
