Chapter 23 - The Sciences

Summary

This chapter examines Shelley’s engagement with early-nineteenth-century science. It explores Shelley’s interest in chemistry at Oxford, his interest in contemporary developments in science (such as galvanism), and his reading of canonical and contemporary writers in science. Humphry Davy, the foremost man of science in Britain in the early nineteenth century, emerges as an important contemporary influence on Shelley; this chapter discusses the influence of Davy’s Elements of Chemical Philosophy (1812) and Elements of Agricultural Chemistry (1813) on Shelley’s writing, specifically in Bodleian MS Shelley adds. e. 6, Queen Mab (1813), and ‘The Cloud’ (1820).