I had greatly anticipated the release of this book, believing that it would explore how the growing field of scientific inquiry influenced the development of Romantic thought as expressed in politics, literature, philosophy, art and music in the first half of the 19th century.The title seems to suggest an exploration of the question of how science plays into the culture of a period-a question of ever increasing relevance to subsequent generations. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science-an era whose consequences are with us still. Other voyages of discovery-astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical-swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution.
Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise.
The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. National Book Critics Circle Award, Nonfiction, 2010
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