Thomas Beddoes was Erasmus Darwin's self-appointed protege: he, like Darwin welcomed revolutions ” whether the French Revolution in politics, the revolution in geology that showed the earth was millions of years old, or the revolution in chemistry that discovered oxygen. In the 1790s, he set up the world's first scientific research institute ” the Pneumatic...

"I congratulate you on your being on the road to happiness" Darwin writing to Beddoes in 1794 A talk on Darwin and his connections with friends of the Beddoes and Edgeworth families and Lunar Society members.   For the last 40 years John Beddoes has been collecting information for a biography on Anna Beddoes (née Edgeworth), the wife of Dr...

In a well-known botanical poem, The Sensitive-Plant, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley draws upon the eroticised, emotive plants of Erasmus Darwin's Loves of the Plants, where Darwin's 'chaste mimosa' gives rise to Shelley's loveless 'sensitive-plant'. In the lesser known 'Unfinished Drama', a mysterious 'magic plant' grows, snake-like, muddling the categories of plant and animal....

by Joanna C. Yates NWCDTP AHRC-Funded PhD Candidate, Keele University Joanne Yates will consider the relationship between Erasmus Darwin's 'Commonplace Book' and his philosophical position as reflected in his published works. The entries Darwin recorded within this object can be divided relatively evenly into three general categories: Medical Practice, Natural History (including science and weather), and...

Why did the Lunar Society emerge in the West Midlands in the 1760s and in what ways can we assess its importance besides exploring the lives of key individuals? This talk looks at the context in which the Lunar Men operated and suggests some agendas for future research.   Dr Malcolm Dick is Honorary Associate...