Dear blog,

So as the sun shines I sit inside and try to write. I’m sure that everyone’s feeling resentful about the glorious weather outside and the fact that we still have to work… I’ve been trying to write my conference paper this week for the ICHSTM conference to be held here in Manchester (http://www.ichstm2013.com/). It’s the most enormous event, with about 1600 delegates, and a whole suite of sessions on science and literature. I had spent a few days in the Royal Institution archives recently, researching my paper about whether there is evidence of an interest in poetry during the early days of the RI, and I came up with loads of interesting stuff from the General Managers’ Minutes and the Annual Reports. I’ve established that there were significant numbers of lectures on ‘non-scientific’ subjects from very early on in the Royal Institution’s existence. I’ve got lots of data: what the lectures were on, who gave them, how much they got paid, how much money they brought into the RI etc etc. I looked into the people who gave the lectures and have found some reports of them. I just don’t have many conclusions to draw from this, other than, that 1) in some years there are even more lectures on non-scientific subjects than scientific subjects, and that 2) it seems as though Davy had a hand in the whole enterprise. Neither of these are going to set the world alight.

Oh well, I can’t spend longer on the paper because I have to get on with writing my article for the Routledge Critical Debates book on ‘Romantic Transformation’. My hunch is that transformation is used as a metaphor in a number of arenas, political, literary and scientific in the early nineteenth century. In fact, I’ve already found it being used in chemistry, geology and physiology. Transformation means that the essential thing itself remains intact but is changed in shape or form: this would fit the idea of a revolution. It’s not that there are new things involved, but that the old thing has changed its form or appearance. Some transformations are specifically monstrous too. I’m still formulating my ideas on this and now its time for some more reading…

All best,

Sharon

Dear blog,

So, I’ve had a week in the British Library, checking and transcribing more Davy letters. It’s great to get back to this work, although I’m not going to manage to finish what’s here in this trip. The last letters I transcribed and checked here during a trip that was almost three years ago to the day. I’ve been here loads in between — how can I have left it three years to come back to these?

I’ve been reading some great stuff. There is a commonly-held belief among recent scholars that Davy never patented his miner’s safety lamp because he didn’t want there to be a full-scale investigation into whether it was really him or George Stephenson who had invented it. He presented himself on the occasion as a benefactor to humankind, benevolently presenting his invention for the good of the nation and as being above such petty concerns as profit. It’s been interesting to read the letters to his friend John G. Children on the subject of a new gundpowder that Davy helped him to develop a few years before this around 1812-13. Even in this episode, Davy is adamant (if not a little hysterical) that the labels on the gunpowder cases make it clear that he has only helped by offering the results of his experiments and that he will make no profit by the sale of them. The idea that it might be called Davy’s gunpowder nearly sends him into paroxysms. There is something similar again in his explosions over the copper-sheeting of ships debacle in 1824. It is in regard to a critical essay in the press over this, that Davy utters these words:

The abusive article is in the Chronicle of Thursday. The Chemist & Mechanics magazine made overtures to me by sending me their first numbers &c; the Chemist being filed [sic] with exaggerating praises: but I never shake hands with chimney sweepers even when in their may day clothes & when they call me “your Honour” (letter to Children, late October 1824).

Doesn’t this shock you? It’s clear how far Davy has come from his humble origins in Penzance when we hear this kind of thing.

I had a tip-off that I want to share, which came from Frank James in the Royal Institution: the Spencer card catalogue, and the reserved photographic card catalogue (both in the manuscript room at the British Library) look as if they may turn up some stuff that I hadn’t found using the normal electronic catalogue. Perhaps everyone else already knew about these but I certainly didn’t.

Anyway, for those who haven’t already heard, I will be starting a new job on 1st September, Prof of Romanticism at Lancaster University. I’m hugely excited and I am aiming to continue this blog there.

All best,

Sharon