Dear blog,<\/p>\n
This is my last post before the Christmas holiday. I have only one day left of work and then am on holiday until Wednesday 4th January, when we have our next North-West Long Nineteenth-Century Seminar at Manchester\u2019s City Library on Deansgate.<\/p>\n
It was good to finish teaching on the 16th<\/sup> December and this week I\u2019ve been able to return to my book, which has been neglected over the past weeks in favour of marking and other tasks. I spent a glorious three hours at the Portico Library (http:\/\/www.theportico.org.uk\/Home.html<\/a>) in the last week of term reading John Davy\u2019s Memoirs of Sir Humphry Davy<\/em> (1836) and trying to get back into the swing of things. Since then I\u2019ve been working on my fourth chapter, on Davy and the sublime. I\u2019ve been reading Davy\u2019s and Thomas Beddoes\u2019s accounts of the nitrous oxide experiments in Bristol (1799-1800), which are brilliant and often hilariously funny. It is quite clear that Davy was hooked on the gas. He describes taking it recreationally, such as when he goes for a moonlit walk along the Avon with a \u2018green bag\u2019 of the gas with him. He speaks of experiments when he drinks a bottle of wine in a matter of seconds and then breathes the gas, to see what the effects are (he promptly throws up). He tells us that he likes to take the gas alone and in the dark and that the sight of someone with an \u2018air-bag\u2019 makes him long to take the gas himself. Of course, this is all in the name of science!<\/p>\n I have made a small discovery too, which others seem not to have noticed. Anna and Rochemont Barbauld were among those in these nitrous oxide trials, as described by Beddoes in his early publication Notice of Some Observations Made at the Pneumatic Institution<\/em> (1799). It is not perhaps surprising, given Beddoes\u2019s associations with Priestley and others, and her account of the effects (as reported by Beddoes) may have been overlooked because she doesn\u2019t seem to be represented in Davy\u2019s account (Researches<\/em>, 1800).<\/p>\n Anyway, have a lovely Christmas and New Year! More in 2012.<\/p>\n Sx<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear blog, This is my last post before the Christmas holiday. I have only one day left of work and then am on holiday until Wednesday 4th January, when we have our next North-West Long Nineteenth-Century Seminar at Manchester\u2019s City … Continue reading