Overview

Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth’s London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth’s prints – a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake’s Progress in 1735 – to unpick the visual, mental and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. Why does longitude appear in novels, smutty stories, political critiques, copyright cases, religious tracts and dictionaries as much as in government papers? This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body – the Board of Longitude – established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea. Meet the cast of characters involved in the search for longitude, from famous novelists and artists to almost unknown pamphleteers and inventors, and see how their interactions informed the fate of longitude’s most famous pursuer, the clockmaker John Harrison.

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9781836244721

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Reviews

Katy Barrett's lively, generously illustrated book examines a controversial topic - the problem of longitude - that gripped eighteenth-century London, with its coffee-house conversations, sharp-eyed artists, industrious problem-solvers and jaded literati. Barrett deftly evokes the cultural contexts that explain the fascination this problem exercised over the public, which manifested itself in a wealth of printed images, pamphlets, magazine articles and books. Readers will learn why and how measuring longitude at sea proved intractable and provoked so much satire and debate; they will gain a wonderful sense of English society through this richly detailed and accomplished cultural history. Ludmilla Jordanova, Emeritus Professor of History and Visual Culture at Durham University Looking for Longitude helps us to understand what the quest to determine longitude at sea tells us about eighteenth-century art, science, technology and society at a significant time in the life of the British nation. The book navigates the reader lucidly through complex debates in the cultural history of science and, importantly, recognises the potency of satire and comedy as arbiters of taste and intellect. Prof. Greg Lynall, King Alfred Chair in English Literature, University of Liverpool ‘In [Barrett’s] study she has sifted through an astounding multitude of written documents and pictorial material dealing with “longitude” as a term connoting a material problem on the one hand and a metaphor in Britain at the time on the other… this book is a valuable and trailblazing contribution to the newer discussion about the cultural dimensions of shipping and navigation.’ Wolfgang Köberer, Mariner’s Mirror ‘[A] remarkably well-researched account of the ways in which this long-running saga impacted on many areas of public discourse, thought and imagery. The print historian will be fascinated by the trove of relevant visual material the author has discovered, which ranges from the technical diagrams to satires and even paintings… this book is a valuable example of the intelligent ways in which contemporary historians have begun to use print as historical evidence.’ Print Quarterly

Author Information

Dr Katy Barrett is an interdisciplinary curator, scholar and writer focusing on interactions between art and science. Currently she works as Deputy Curator of Art and Head of Interpretation at the Houses of Parliament. She has previously worked as Curator of Art Collections at the Science Museum, London, Curator of Art, pre-1800, at Royal Museums Greenwich, and has held various posts in national and university museums. She has higher degrees in History of Art and History of Science and is active on social media as @SpoonsonTrays.

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