In the late 1700s, five gifted inventors and amateur scholars in Birmingham, England, came together for what one of them, Erasmus Darwin, called "a little philosophical laughing." They also helped kick-start the industrial revolution, as Jenny Uglow relates in the lively
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. Their "Lunar Society" included Joseph Priestley, the chemist who isolated oxygen; James Watt, the Scottish inventor of the steam engine; and Josiah Wedgwood, whose manufacture of pottery created the industrial model for the next century. Joined by other "toymakers" and scholarly tinkerers, they concocted schemes for building great canals and harnessing the power of electricity, coined words such as "hydrogen" and "iridescent," shared theories and bank accounts, fended off embezzlers and industrial spies, and forged a fine "democracy of knowledge." And they had a fine time doing so, proving that scholars need not be dullards or eccentrics asocial.
Uglow's spirited look at this group of remarkable "lunaticks" captures a critical, short-lived moment of early modern history. Readers who share their conviction that knowledge brings power will find this book a rewarding adventure. --Gregory McNamee
This hefty volume combines prodigious research with an obvious fondness for the subject matter. Uglow, an editor at U.K.'s Chatto & Windus publishing house, garnered praise for her incisive book on the life and images of William Hogarth as well as for her biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. Here, Uglow details the wild inventions of the 18th century, with the turbulent changes in the Georgian world as backdrop, and so delivers a complete, though at times ponderously detailed, portrait of the men who formed the Lunar Society of Birmingham. The society was a kind of study group for the nascent Industrial Revolution, which would transform England in two generations. Among the lunar men were toy maker Matthew Boulton, James Watt of the steam engine, potter Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen, and physician and evolutionary theorist Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather. As Uglow writes, its members met on the full moon (to facilitate travel at night), "warmed by wine and friendship, their heads full of air pumps and elements and electrical machines, their ears ringing with talk, the whirring of wheels and the hiss of gas." Each was accomplished in his profession, and yet each applied boundless reserves of energy and inventiveness to outside interests, from the practical, such as canal-building, herbal medicines and steam-propelled water pumps, to the outright bizarre, such as Erasmus Darwin's fantastic mechanical talking mouth. Uglow's writing has great breadth of subject and character-along with the occasional bawdiness, too.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Uglow, editor at Chatto & Windus and author of Hogarth: A Life and a World, has written a lively account of a remarkable group of individuals, in 18th-century England, when men's clubs proliferated. The clubs not only offered a forum in which individuals with like interests could gather for discussion, but members offered each other physical protection afterward when they left the coffee house, tavern, or private home that served as their meeting place. In the 1760s, in the English Midlands, a group of amateur experimenters came together to form a club called the Lunar Society of Birmingham-so-called because the club met at each full moon. The members included James Watt, inventor of the steam engine; Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin and an inventor and evolutionary theorist in his own right; Josiah Wedgwood, the potter; Joseph Priestly, discoverer of oxygen; Matthew Boulton, the toymaker; and others who would make remarkable contributions to science and industry. The author makes a convincing case for the importance of this talented group, whose efforts, especially James Watt's work with steam engines, would help kickstart the Industrial Revolution. Although the publisher compares this multiple biography with Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club, the Lunar Society men bore greater resemblance to capitalist doers than philosophers. This work is recommended for public and academic libraries.
Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., MN
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Scientific American
We were united, one of them said, by a common love of science, which we thought sufficient to bring together persons of all distinctions. That was Joseph Priestley. A number of other men, many of whom were or would become famous, belonged to the Lunar Society of Birmingham in England during its lifetime in the latter decades of the 18th century. They are a small, informal bunch who simply try to meet at each other's houses on the Monday nearest the full moon, to have light to ride home (hence the name) and, like other clubs, they drink and laugh and argue into the night. But the Lunar men are different--together they nudge their whole society and culture over the threshold of the modern, tilting it irrevocably away from old patterns of life towards the world we know today. Uglow, biographer of (among others) William Hogarth and George Eliot, focuses on the five members who formed the core. Besides Priestley, they were Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood. Through her portraits of them and their work, she evokes vividly the state of science and technology on the eve of the industrial revolution. This small group of friends, Uglow writes, really was at the leading edge of almost every movement of its time in science, in industry and in the arts--even in agriculture.
Editors of Scientific American
Uglow's lively chronicle focuses on five remarkable men, the leading spirits of England's eighteenth-century Lunar Society: pioneering manufacturer Matthew Boulton; the gregarious physician, poet, and biological theorist Erasmus Darwin; the ingenious inventor James Watt; the gifted potter Josiah Wedgwood; and the heterodox preacher and groundbreaking chemist Joseph Priestley. Capturing the sense of imaginative daring that united these five--and the others who gravitated to them--Uglow recounts their lively monthly meetings (held on the Monday closest to the full moon) and the stunning variety of projects and discoveries that came out of their collaboration. Readers learn, for instance, how Boulton helped Watt surmount the difficulties encountered in putting his steam engine to work in the mines of Cornwall and how Priestley's experiments with oxygen set Darwin off on his own muddy investigations of gasses. Seeing in her subjects no mere coterie of ivory-tower theorists, Uglow hails the Lunar men as audacious advocates of a modern new world, mechanized, egalitarian, and enlightened. Yet she also acknowledges that in their optimistic fantasies, these visionaries failed to anticipate the ugly underside of the Industrial Revolution they helped launch. Rich in anecdote and insight, this is a book sure to attract both the casual browser and the serious specialist. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"An absolute wonder of a book."
-The Economist
About the Author
Jenny Uglow is an editor at Chatto & Windus and lives in Canterbury, England. Her previous books include Hogarth (FSG 1997), Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (FSG 1993), and George Eliot. She is Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
