The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

Richard Holmes

Jul 2009 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

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. 

When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. 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.

BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Richard Holmes's Falling Upwards.

Ratings and reviews

About halfway through this, I described it to a friend as a "boring book about really interesting people." I've not changed my mind much since then, though "boring" may be too harsh. Holmes ties the Romantic poets to Victorian science; so we get a little Coleridge, a little Shelley, a little Davy, a little Faraday, a little Banks, a little Wordsworth. Holmes is genteel enough to include a helpful glossary of important people, which I appreciated immensely, but I still felt his scope was a little too large to treat with deep, heart-felt and soulful interest (except, ironically, his Frankenstein's Creature section, which he constructed admirably) Holmes starts with Joseph Banks, the curtained central character behind most of the happenings in British science in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, describing in great detail his youthful voyage to Tahiti and how that man returned to England and, somehow, settled into a pedantic life of political jockeying for the sake of science as the head of the Royal Society. Holmes' conceit is that all things branch from Banks and the Royal Society. It almost works (and may well work if one knows more about that era than I do) but it seemed, to my completely uninitiated sensibilities, to be slightly too scatter-shot. Or maybe it was just too much to absorb and I would find my way more thoroughly on a second reading. I learned a good deal, though. And I am fascinated enough with some of the figures (Mungo Park, Humphrey Davy) that I want to read about them further.

About the author

Richard Holmes is the author of Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer; Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer; Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage; Shelley: The Pursuit (for which he received the Somerset Maugham Award); Coleridge: Early Visions; and Coleridge: Darker Reflections (a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist). He lives in England.