Conversaziones and the experience of science in victorian england

Journal of Victorian Culture

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 208-230

  Alberti, Samuel J M M ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85005819751     PISSN: 13555502     EISSN: 17500133     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3366/jvc.2003.8.2.208     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Manchester Scientific Students' Association, Soirée in the Large Free Trade Hall, in Celebration of the Coming of Age of the Manchester Scientific Students' Association, Thursday, 27th April 1882 (Manchester:Heywood, 1882), front matter, 4. ‘Students’, of course, meant ‘ardent lovers of science’ (6) rather than, necessarily, persons enrolled in a formal course. Perry, an ordained Jesuit, was Director of the Astronomical and Meteorological Observatories and Lecturer in Astronomy and Mathematics, Stonyhurst College.
2. OED.
3. Burnett, John. 1997. ‘The Conversazione at the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, 1875’. Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, 4:145–8. Notable exceptions include Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes:Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850 (London:Routledge, 1987); Victoria Moger, ‘A Conversazione at the Ironmongers' Hall’, in Johanna Bird, Hugh Chapman and John Clark, eds, Collectanea Londiniensia:Studies in London Archaeology and History Presented to Ralph Merrifield (London:London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 1978), 453–62; Jane Wood, ‘A Victorian Institution?:Knowledge, Aesthetic Consciousness, and the Conversazione’, supplement to Martin Hewitt, ed., Culture Institutions (Leeds:Trinity and All Saints, 2002).
4. Allen, David E., 1994. The Naturalist in Britain:A Social History, 2nd Princeton:Princeton University Press. Susan Gamble, ‘An Appealing Case of Spectra:Photographs on Display at the Royal Society, London 1891’, Nuncius 17 (2002):635–51; Graeme J.N. Gooday, ‘The Premisses of Premises:Spatial Issues in the Historical Construction of Laboratory Credibility’, in Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar, eds, Making Space:Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (London:Macmillan, 1998), 216–45; Simon Naylor, ‘The Field, the Museum and the Lecture Hall:The Spaces of Natural History in Victorian Cornwall’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27 (2002):494–513; Ruth Richardson, ‘Microscopical Conversaziones’, The Lancet, 8 December 2001, 2004; James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation:The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago:Chicago University Press, 2000). On the integrated study of the history of science, technology and medicine, see John V. Pickstone, Ways of Knowing:A New History of Science, Technology and Medicine (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 2000).
5. Lightman, Bernard V., ed. 1997. Victorian Science in Context Chicago:University of Chicago Press. See, for example, the papers in
6. Averley, Gwen. 1986. ‘The “Social Chemists”:English Chemical Societies in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century’. Ambix, 33:99–128. Susan F. Cannon, Science in Culture:The Early Victorian Period (Folkestone:Dawson, 1978); Paul Elliott, ‘The Birth of Public Science in the English Provinces:Natural Philosophy in Derby, c.1690–1760’, Annals of Science 57 (2000):61–100; Jan Golinski, Science As Public Culture:Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992); Ian Inkster and Jack Morrell, eds, Metropolis and Province:Science in British Culture, 1780–1850 (London:Hutchinson, 1983); Roy Porter, ‘Science, Provincial Culture and Public Opinion in Enlightenment England’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 3 (1980):20–46; Simon Schaffer, ‘Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science 21 (1983):1–43; Larry R. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science:Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992).
7. Desmond, Adrian. 1989. The Politics of Evolution:Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London Chicago:University of Chicago Press. Anne Secord, ‘Science in the Pub:Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire’, History of Science 32 (1994):269–315. For studies of the middle classes earlier in the century, see Arnold Thackray, ‘Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context:The Manchester Model’, American Historical Review 79 (1974):672–709; Howard M. Wach, ‘Culture and the Middle Classes:Popular Knowledge in Industrial Manchester’, Journal of British Studies 27 (1988):375–404.
8. Gunn, Simon. 1997. ‘The Sublime and the Vulgar:The Hallé Cocerts and the Consitution of “High Culture” in Manchester c.1850–1880’. Journal of Victorian Culture, 2:208–28. Alan J. Kidd, ‘Local History’ and the Culture of the Middle Classes in North-West England, c.1840–1900’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 147 (1997):115–38.
9. Wach, ‘Culture and the Middle Classes’, 400.
10. Cooter, Roger. 1984. The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science:Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain 2Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Roger Cooter and Steven Pumfrey, ‘Separate Spheres and Public Places:Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture’, History of Science 32 (1994):237–67.
11. Davidoff, Leonore. 1986. The Best Circles:Society Etiquette and the Season, 2nd London:Cresset.
12. Bennett, Tony. 1995. The Birth of the Museum:History, Theory, Politics London and New York:Routledge. Barbara J. Black, On Exhibit:Victorians and Their Museums (Charlottesville, London:University Press of Virginia, 2000); Robert Brain, Going to the Fair:Readings in the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions (Cambridge:Whipple Museum of the History of Science, 1993); Susan M. Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections:A Cultural Study (Leicester:Leicester University Press, 1992); Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England:Advertising and Spectacle, 1851–1914 (London:Verso, 1990).
13. Wood, ‘A Victorian Institution?’.
14. Doyle, Arthur C., 1891. ‘The Voice of Science’. The Strand Magazine, 1:313
15. Gooday, ‘The Premisses of Premises’; Elizabeth J. Morse, ‘Open Days and Conversaziones:The Civic University Meets Its Public’, paper delivered at ‘The University in Its Urban Setting’, University of Aberdeen, July 1993. The Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society, however, was still holding conversaziones in the 1950s.
16. Sala, George A., 1862. Twice Round the Clock; or the Hours of the Day and Night in London 301London:Marsh. new edn
17. Doyle, ‘The Voice of Science’, 313 (emphasis added). The os frontis is a frontal (cranial) bone; the Bos Montis was probably a mountain ruminant.
18. Desmond, Adrian. 2001. ‘Redefining the X Axis:“Professionals”, “Amateurs” and the Making of Mid-Victorian Biology’. Journal of the History of Biology, 34:3–50. For a recent survey of the scholarship on amateurs and professionals in Victorian science, see
19. Conversazione of the Rotherham Literary and Scientific Society (Rotherham:Hindcliffe, 1866), 1.
20. ‘Our Weekly Gossip’, Athenaeum, 11 May 1861, 632.
21. Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne [NHSN], Conversazione, January 19th, 1904 (Newcastle:private circulation, 1904); Morse, ‘Open Days and Conversaziones’.
22. [Richard Doyle], ‘Conversazione:Science and Art’, Cornhill Magazine 6 (1862), 269.
23. Morus, Iwan R., 1998. Frankenstein's Children:Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press. Royal Society, Conversazione. May 4, 1881 (London:private circulation, 1881); Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society, Preliminary Notice. Programme of Proceedings and Entertainments, in Connection With the Jubilee Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Foundation of the Society, October 26th to 29th, 1880 (Halifax:Private circulation, 1880).
24. ‘Chemical Wonders’, Owens College Union Magazine 5 (1898), 38.
25. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain.
26. Sorby, Henry C., 1906. Various Scientific Papers Sheffield:privately bound. At the Sheffield Naturalists' Club annual conversazione in the 1870s. unpaginated.
27. [Doyle], ‘Conversazione’, 269.
28. Cameron, Gordon G., and Housden, Leslie George, eds. 1925. Guy's Hospital Gazette:Special Number in Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Hospital and the Centenary of the Medical School, 1725–1925 76London:Ash. At Guy's Hospital in 1871, detailed in
29. ‘Conversazione and Exhibition of Works of Art at Ironmongers' Hall’, Illustrated London News, 18 May 1861, 475.
30. Forgan, Sophie. 1994. ‘The Architecture of Display:Museums, Universities and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Britain’. History of Science, 32:139–62. On the museum as a book, see, for example
31. Sala, Twice Round the Clock, 311.
32. Ellegård, Alvar. 1990. Darwin and the General Reader:The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859–1872, 2nd Chicago:University of Chicago Press. Gowan Dawson, ‘Walter Pater, Aestheticism, and Victorian Science’ (PhD, University of Sheffield, 1998); Paul White, ‘Cross-Cultural Encounters:The Co-Production of Science and Literature in Mid-Victorian Periodicals’, in Roger Luckhurst and Josephine McDonagh, eds, Transactions and Encounters:Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 2002), 75–95.
33. Alberti, Samuel J.M.M., 2002. ‘Placing Nature:Natural History Collections and Their Owners in Nineteenth-Century Provincial England’. British Journal for the History of Science, 35:291–311. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, eds, The Origins of Museums:The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, 2nd edn (London:Stratus, 2001); Wood, ‘A Victorian Institution?’.
34. For an example of a guide through such an exhibition, see British Association for the Advancement of Science, British Association Meeting, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1889. Conversazione Given by the Local Committee in the Natural History Museum (Newcastle:private circulation, 1889).
35. Gunn, Simon. 1999. “ ‘The Public Sphere, Modernity and Consumption:New Perspectives on the History of the English Middle Class’ ”. In Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism:Middle-Class Identity in Britain 1800–1940 Edited by:Kidd, Alan, and Nicholls, David. 12–29. Manchester:Manchester University Press. Theodore Koditschek, Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society:Bradford, 1750–1850 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990); R.J. Morris, ‘The Middle Class and British Towns and Cities of the Industrial Revolution, 1780–1870’, in Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe, eds, The Pursuit of Urban History (London:Edward Arnold, 1983), 286–306; Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class:The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995); Janet Wolff and John Seed, eds, The Culture of Capital:Art, Power and the Nineteenth-Century Middle Class (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1988). I appreciate that figures 1–3 represent metropolitan events, which sources are more extensively illustrated.
36. Bailey, Peter. 1978. Leisure and Class in Victorian Britain:Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885 London:Routledge. Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800:The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford:Clarendon, 2000); Hugh Cunningham, Leisure and the Industrial Revolution c.1780-c.1880 (London:Croom Helm, 1980); Charles Dickens, The Mudfog Papers, Etc. (London:Bentley, 1880); R.J. Morris, ‘Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780–1850:An Analysis’, Historical Journal 26 (1983):95–118; idem., ‘Clubs, Societies and Associations’, in F.M.L. Thompson, eds, The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950, 3 vols, 3:Social Agencies and Institutions (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990), 395–443; Richard N. Price, British Society, 1680–1880:Dynamism, Containment, and Change (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999); F.M.L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society:A Social History of Victorian Britain 1830–1900 (London:Fontana, 1988).
37. Morris, R.J., 1990. Class, Sect and Party:The Making of the British Middle Class, Leeds 1820–1850 168Manchester:Manchester University Press. Cited in
38. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 416.
39. Tennyson, Alfred. 1850. The Princess:A Medley, 3rd 1London:Moxon.
40. Morris, Class, Sect and Party.
41. Higham, Norman. 1963. A Very Scientific Gentleman:The Major Achievements of Henry Clifton Sorby London:Pergamon.
42. Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society [SLPS], Conversazione, February 16th, 1882 (Sheffield:Parkin and Bacon, 1882).
43. Gamble, ‘An Appealing Case of Spectra’.
44. ‘Sperans’, ‘Volantia’, Owens College Magazine 24 (1892), 60.
45. Wood, ‘A Victorian Institution?’, 3.
46. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain.
47. ‘Natural History Societies II’, Nature 3 (1870), 141.
48. Crary, Jonathan. 1990. Techniques of the Observer:On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century 14Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press. Patricia Anderson, The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture 1790–1860 (Oxford:Clarendon, 1991); Ralph Hyde, Panoramania! The Art and Entertainment of the ‘All-Embracing’ View (London:Trefoil, Barbican, 1988).
49. The first stanza of a poem penned in 1908 by David Milne (b.1838), boilerman at the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, remembering a conversazione at the museum in 1875. Cited in Burnett, ‘Conversazione at the Edinburgh Museum’, 145.
50. Secord, Anne. 2002. ‘Botany on a Plate:Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-Century Scientific Knowledge’. Isis, 93:28–57.
51. Hemmingway, J.E., 1946. “ ‘Martin Simpson, Geologist and Curator 1800–1892’ ”. In Chapters of Whitby History 1823–1946:The Story of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society and of Whitby Museum Edited by:Browne, H.B., 93–105. Hull:Brown. The arduous nature of travelling with equipment prompted Martin Simpson, an early nineteenth-century itinerant science lecturer, to give it up and seek employment as a curator in Whitby.
52. Altick, Richard D., 1978. The Shows of London Cambridge, Mass.:Belknap. Simon During, Modern Enchantments:The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cambridge, Mass.; London:Harvard University Press, 2002); Hyde, Panoramania!; David Robinson, The Lantern Image:Iconography of the Magic Lantern, 1420–1880 (Ripon:Magic Lantern Society, 1993); Barbara M. Stafford and Frances Terpak, Devices of Wonder:From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (Los Angeles:Getty Research Institute, 2001). Phantasmagoria projected ghostly visions onto screens or smoke; zoetropes and stroboscopes were devices that simulated moving images using multiple pictures; stereoscopes combined two images to give a three-dimensional effect.
53. Mayhew, Henry. 1971. The Unknown Mayhew. Selections From the Morning Chronicle, 1849–1850 Edited by:Thompson, E.P., and Yeo, Eileen. 358London:Merlin.
54. ‘Impressionist’, ‘Associated Conversazione. A Wild Night at the College of Science’, Northern Weekly Leader, 4 May 1889, 5.
55. Hudson, William. 1874. The Life of John Holland of Sheffield Park 419London:Longmans Green.
56. Hill, Kate. 1999. “ ‘“Thoroughly Embued With the Spirit of Ancient Greece”:Symbolism and Space in Victorian Civic Culture’ ”. In Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism:Middle-Class Identity in Britain 1800–1940 Edited by:Kidd, Alan, and Nicholls, David. 99–111. Manchester:Manchester University Press. Terry Wyke, A Hall for All Seasons:A History of the Free Trade Hall (Manchester:Charles Hallé Foundation, 1996).
57. Lightman, Bernard V., 2000. ‘The Visual Theology of Victorian Popularizers of Science:From Reverent Eye to Chemical Retina’. Isis, 91:651–80. Morus, Frankenstein's Children; Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, ‘Visual Representation and Post-Constructivist History of Science’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 28 (1997):139–71; Secord, ‘Botany on a Plate’; Jennifer Tucker, ‘Photography As Witness, Detective and Imposter:Visual Representation in Victorian Science’, in Bernard V. Lightman, ed., Victorian Science in Context (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1997), 378–408.
58. Wood, ‘A Victorian Institution?’.
59. Sala, Twice Round the Clock, 301.
60. Gunn, Simon. 2000. The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class:Ritual and Authority in the English Industrial City 1840–1914 Manchester:Manchester University Press. On urban ritual, see
61. [Doyle], ‘Conversazione’, 269.
62. Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History:Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects Harmondsworth:Penguin. Richards, Commodity Culture.
63. University College [Liverpool] Magazine 6 (1891), cited in Morse 1993, 6.
64. Briggs, Asa. 1983. A Social History of England London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
65. MacDonald, Stuart. 1985. “ ‘The Royal Manchester Institution’ ”. In Art and Architecture in Victorian Manchester:Ten Illustrations of Patronage and Practice Edited by:Archer, John H.G., 43Manchester:Manchester University Press. Cited in
66. Black, On Exhibit, 24.
67. ‘Impressionist’, ‘Associated Conversazione’, 5 (emphasis added).
68. Sala, Twice Round the Clock, 301.
69. Hudson, Life of John Holland, 418; ‘Impressionist’, ‘Associated Conversazione’, 5.
70. An anonymous report of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, c.1881, cited in Naylor, ‘The Field, the Museum and the Lecture Hall’, 503. Emphasis added.
71. Walters, Alice N., 1997. ‘Conversation Pieces:Science and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England’. History of Science, 35:121–54. On science and conversation, see Secord, Victorian Sensation;
72. Alberti, Samuel J.M.M., 2001. ‘Amateurs and Professionals in One County:Biology and Natural History in Late Victorian Yorkshire’. Journal of the History of Biology, 34:115–47. idem., ‘Natural History and the Philosophical Societies of Late Victorian Yorkshire’, Archives of Natural History 30 (2003 forthcoming).
73. See, for example, Conversazione of the Rotherham Society.
74. SLPS, Conversazione.
75. NHSN, Conversazione.
76. ‘The Frogversazione at the Mansion House’, Punch 20 (1851), 250.
77. Wood, ‘A Victorian Instituion’.
78. NHSN, Conversazione.
79. David Milne (see note 49), cited in Burnett, ‘Conversazione at the Edinburgh Museum’, 146.
80. Moger, ‘Conversazione’.
81. ‘Scientific Intelligence’, Punch 9 (1845), 243.
82. On the place of print in the soirée, see Secord, Victorian Sensation.
83. Anonymous,‘Scientific Intelligence’; [Doyle], ‘Conversazione’, 269.
84. Armstrong, Isobel. 2002. “ ‘The Microscope:Mediations of the Sub-Visible World’ ”. In Transactions and Encounters:Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century Edited by:Luckhurst, Roger, and McDonagh, Josephine. 30–54. Manchester:Manchester University Press. on microscopical conversaziones, see Philip H. Gosse, Evenings at the Microscope:Or, Researches Among the Minute Organs and Forms of Animal Life (London:Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1859).
85. ‘Scientific Conversazione at the Apothecaries' Hall’, Illustrated London News, 28 April 1855, 405–6.
86. Topham, Jonathan R., 2000. ‘Scientific Publishing and the Reading of Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain:A Historiographical Survey and Guide to Sources’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 31:559–612. Alberti, ‘Placing Nature’; Lightman, ‘Visual Theology’;
87. Walters, ‘Conversation Pieces’, 122.
88. Nyhart, Lynn K., and Broman, Thomas H., eds. 2002. “ Science and Civil Society ”. In Osiris Vol. 17, Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
89. Gunn, ‘The Sublime and the Vulgar’; Gunn, Public Culture; Kidd, ‘Local History’; Secord, Victorian Sensation.
90. In Rotherham, for example, the Scientific and Literary Society congratulated themselves that in their inaugural conversazione, ‘our townsmen have successfully rivalled, if not surpassed their Sheffield neighbours’ (Conversazione of the Rotherham Society, 2).