Awards

• Short-listed for BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009
• Short-listed for Dingle Prize 2009
• Shortlisted for BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009.
• Shortlisted for Dingle Prize 2009.

Overview

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9780007149537

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Reviews

'Thrilling: a portrait of bold adventure among the stars, across the oceans, deep into matter, poetry and the human psyche.' Peter Forbes, Independent 'A glorious blend of the scientific and the literary that deserves to carry off armfuls of awards and confirms Holmes's reputation as one on the stellar biographers of the age.' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year 'No question -- the non-fiction book of the year is Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder , not only beautifully written, but also kicking open a new perspective on the Romantic age.' Andrew Marr, Observer, Books of the Year 'Itself a wonder -- a masterpiece of skilful and imaginative storytelling.' Michael Holroyd, Guardian, Books of the Year 'Rich, solid and sparkling, this is a wonderful book.' Claire Tomalin, Guardian, Books of the Year 'Dazzling and approachable. It's a brilliantly written account!original in its connections and very generous in its attention.' Andrew Motion, Guardian, Books of the Year 'Witty, intellectually dazzling and wholly gripping.' Richard Mabey, Guardian, Books of the Year Stephen Howe, Independent (Book of the Year) 'Glittering.' Christian Tyler, Financial Times (Book of the Year) 'A splendid plum pudding of a book.' Nigel Hawkes , The Times (Book of the Year) 'Holmes...brings the full force of his love and understanding of the Romantic Age to the lives of three pioneering figures...writing, like the figures he describes...driven by a common ideal of intense, even reckless personal commitment to discover, and this is what makes this book so wonderful.' The Times (Book of the Year) 'Exhilarating in its ambition.' Scotsman (Book of the Year) 'A dazzling cornucopia.' Economist (Book of the Year) 'No one could be better qualified for the task!Scientists, like poets, need a sense of wonder, a sense of humility and a sense of humour. Holmes has all three in abundance.' Sunday Telegraph 'Exuberant!Holmes suffuses his book with the joy, hope and wonder of the revolutionary era. Reading it is like a holiday in a sunny landscape, full of fascinating bypaths that lead to unexpected vistas!it succeeds inspiringly.' John Carey, Sunday Times 'Heartbreaking accounts of hopes and fears, ambitions and disappointments dance along the pages!There is no dry page in this visceral, spirited and sexy account.' The Times 'Richard Holmes's stellar collective biography!gives a gripping account of the scientific research that inspired a sense of wonder in poets and experimenters alike!fascinating!this beautifully crafted book deserves all the praise it will undoubtedly attract. Well-researched and vividly written The Age of Wonder will fascinate scientists and poets alike.' Literary Review 'A new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigorating, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful.' Guardian 'Vividly conveys the compelling fusion of art and science in the 18th century!this is a book to linger over, to savour the tantalising details of the minor figures! The Age of Wonder allows readers to recapture the combined thrill of emerging scientific order and imaginative creativity.' Financial Times 'Wonderfully engaging!Holmes brilliantly illuminates the human and subjective aspects of science-making.' Scotsman 'Mesmerising!Holmes succeeds in bringing alive this period in all its complexities without ever losing the narrative pace!his writing itself proves that science and poetry can be united.' Mail on Sunday 'A seamless narrative that is laced, to good effect, with a great deal of titillating gossip. The end result is a masterpiece: informative, amusing, insightful -- and utterly compelling.' Observer 'Delicious!exuberant and thought-provoking.' New Statesman 'Fascinating in its own right; but more than that it serves as a model of how science should be taught!recovering and communicating the beauties and truths of modern science, uniting the two cultures, awaits its genius. This book provides the inspiration.' Spectator 'Compelling!a remarkable achievement. Romanticism in all of its multifaceted richness has had no guide more eloquent than Richard Holmes.' THES 'Vivid and finely constructed.' Miranda Seymour, Observer 'Magisterial!Holmes makes heavy use of personal diaries, journals, letters and notebooks!this confessional dimension!lends the book a wonderful intimacy!compelling.' Evening Standard Praise for Coleridge: Early Visions 'One of the greatest literary biographies ever written.' Daily Telegraph 'Dazzling. A biography like few I have ever read.' James Wood, Guardian Praise for Coleridge: Darker Reflections 'One of the greatest biographies of the century. Pure joy to read, it is a shimmering portrait of the mature artist veering between brilliance and despair.' Financial Times 'This -- and I can't remember ever thinking this before so strongly -- is a biography to grow old with.' Independent

'Rich and sparkling, this is a wonderful book.' Claire Tomalin, Guardian, Books of the Year 'Exuberant!Holmes suffuses his book with the joy, hope and wonder of the revolutionary era. Reading it is like a holiday in a sunny landscape, full of fascinating bypaths that lead to unexpected vistas!it succeeds inspiringly.' John Carey, Sunday Times 'Thrilling: a portrait of bold adventure among the stars, across the oceans, deep into matter, poetry and the human psyche.' Peter Forbes, Independent 'A glorious blend of the scientific and the literary that deserves to carry off armfuls of awards and confirms Holmes's reputation as one on the stellar biographers of the age.' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year 'No question -- the non-fiction book of the year is Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder , not only beautifully written, but also kicking open a new perspective on the Romantic age.' Andrew Marr, Observer, Books of the Year 'Itself a wonder -- a masterpiece of skilful and imaginative storytelling.' Michael Holroyd, Guardian, Books of the Year 'Dazzling and approachable. It's a brilliantly written account!original in its connections and very generous in its attention.' Andrew Motion, Guardian, Books of the Year 'Witty, intellectually dazzling and wholly gripping.' Richard Mabey, Guardian, Books of the Year 'So immediate and so beguiling is Holmes's prose that we are with him all the way.' Sunday Telegraph 'Brimming with anecdote, Holmes's enthusiastic narrative amply conveys the period's spirited, often reckless pursuit of discovery with an astute balance of technical detail and the wider cultural picture.' Financial Times 'Glittering.' Christian Tyler, Financial Times (Book of the Year) 'A splendid plum pudding of a book.' Nigel Hawkes , The Times (Book of the Year) 'This superb book!is a series of cracking narratives. What a privilege to have a guide such as Richard Holmes.' Daily Telegraph 'The author brings the full force of his love and understanding of the Romantic age to the lives of three pioneering figures!.Holmes's writing, like the figures he describes, is driven by a common ideal of intense, even reckless personal commitment to discovery , and this is what makes his book so wonderful.' Sunday Times 'Exhilarating.' Daily Express 'Exhilarating in its ambition.' Scotsman (Book of the Year) 'A dazzling cornucopia.' Economist (Book of the Year) 'No one could be better qualified for the task!Scientists, like poets, need a sense of wonder, a sense of humility and a sense of humour. Holmes has all three in abundance.' Sunday Telegraph 'Heartbreaking accounts of hopes and fears, ambitions and disappointments dance along the pages!There is no dry page in this visceral, spirited and sexy account.' The Times 'Richard Holmes's stellar collective biography!gives a gripping account of the scientific research that inspired a sense of wonder in poets and experimenters alike!fascinating!this beautifully crafted book deserves all the praise it will undoubtedly attract. Well-researched and vividly written, The Age of Wonder will fascinate scientists and poets alike.' Literary Review 'A new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigorating, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful.' Guardian 'Vividly conveys the compelling fusion of art and science in the 18th century!this is a book to linger over, to savour the tantalising details of the minor figures! The Age of Wonder allows readers to recapture the combined thrill of emerging scientific order and imaginative creativity.' Financial Times 'Wonderfully engaging!Holmes brilliantly illuminates the human and subjective aspects of science-making.' Scotsman 'Mesmerising!Holmes succeeds in bringing alive this period in all its complexities without ever losing the narrative pace!his writing itself proves that science and poetry can be united.' Mail on Sunday 'A seamless narrative that is laced, to good effect, with a great deal of titillating gossip. The end result is a masterpiece: informative, amusing, insightful -- and utterly compelling.' Observer 'Delicious!exuberant and thought-provoking.' New Statesman 'Fascinating in its own right; but more than that it serves as a model of how science should be taught!recovering and communicating the beauties and truths of modern science, uniting the two cultures, awaits its genius. This book provides the inspiration.' Spectator 'Compelling!a remarkable achievement. Romanticism in all of its multifaceted richness has had no guide more eloquent than Richard Holmes.' THES 'Vivid and finely constructed.' Miranda Seymour, Observer 'Magisterial!Holmes makes heavy use of personal diaries, journals, letters and notebooks!this confessional dimension!lends the book a wonderful intimacy!compelling.' Evening Standard 'Dazzling. A biography like few I have ever read.' James Wood, Guardian 'Brain food of the most interesting kind, this is a book that readers will love as much as the author's Shelley .' The Independent

Energetic analysis of the Romantic Age of Science. Romanticism, the deeply emotional artistic movement of the second half of the 18th century, was partly a reaction against the pragmatism of Enlightenment scientists. However, British historian Holmes (Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, 2000, etc.) writes, the divide between scientific endeavors and artistic pursuits was not always so clearly delineated. The author focuses primarily on the lives of two men who straddled both worlds, who embraced Romantic science and pursued it with the passion of poets or painters. Astronomer William Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, started his career as a musician. That led to an interest in mathematics and then astronomy, which he pursued with the same emotional fervor as any classical music piece. He even compared his skill at seeing astronomical phenomena with the skill required to play Handel's fugues. Holmes also looks at the British chemist Humphry Davy, who, among other accomplishments, discovered that chlorine and iodine were elements. Early on, Davy wrote poetry, and later became friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One of his poems celebrated science, whose delicious water flows / From Nature's bosom. Davy's enthusiasm led to risky, self-destructive behavior - he often inhaled strange chemical gases as experiments, a practice that nearly killed him. While partaking of nitrous oxide with acquaintances, he extolled the glories of science: I dream of Science restoring to Nature what Luxury, what Civilization have stolen from her - pure hearts, the forms of angels, bosoms beautiful, and panting with Joy & Hope. Davy may have had a brilliant scientist's brain, but he had the heart and soul of a poet. How these two contradictory ideas not only coexisted, but flourished together during the Romantic era, makes for engrossing reading.Enjoyable excavation of a time when science and art fed off each other, to the benefit of both communities. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Richard Holmes is Professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia, and editor of the Harper Perennial series Classic Biographies launched in 2004. His is a Fellow of the British Academy, has honorary doctorates from UEA and the Tavistock Institute, and was awarded an OBE in 1992. His first book, Shelley: The Pursuit, won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1974. Coleridge: Early Visions won the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year, and Dr Johnson & Mr Savage won the James Tait Black Prize. Coleridge: Darker Reflections, won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Heinemann Award. He has published two studies of European biography, Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer in 1985, and Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer in 2000.

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