Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher by Davy, Humphry - 1830

London: John Murray, 1830. First edition.

1830 FIRST EDITION EARLY VICTORIAN BESTSELLER ON THE ROLE OF SCIENCE IN SOCIETY BY AN EMINENT BRITISH CHEMIST.

6 1/2 x 4 inches hardcover, 3/4 leather binding with marbled boards, gilt title to spine, bookplate to front paste-down, vi, [vi], 281, [i]. Corners bumped, wear to covers, bottom 3/4 inches of spine chipped, binding tight, text unmarked, very good minus in custom archival mylar cover.

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY (1778 - 1829) was a Cornish chemist and inventor. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." He was a 1st Baronet, President of the Royal Society, and Fellow of the Geological Society. Davy's lectures gave his audience a vision of human civilization brought forward by scientific discovery. Davy's lectures also included spectacular and sometimes dangerous chemical demonstrations for his audience, a generous helping of references to divine creation, and genuine scientific information. By June 1802, after just over a year at the Institution and at the age of 23, Davy was nominated to full lecturer at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In 1819, Davy was awarded a baronetcy, the first such honor ever conferred on a man of science in Britain. A year later he became President of the Royal Society. Davy's laboratory assistant, Michael Faraday, went on to enhance Davy's work and would become the more famous and influential scientist. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age", and Southey said that "he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art." He spent the last months of his life writing Consolations in Travel (offered here), an immensely popular, somewhat freeform compendium of poetry, thoughts on science and philosophy. Published posthumously, the work became a staple of both scientific and family libraries for several decades afterward.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher is one of seven early 19th century science books described in James Secord's Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (2014). "Consolations discuss the early geological history of the earth; problems of generation and reproduction; the role of great men in history and in science; and the nature of time and immortality. Consolations sold exceptionally well, with seven editions in forty years. The reading of the book, even in a comfortable library or drawing room, was designed to call up the experience of reflective travel, being in size and shape a volume that might be taken on a journey. The vision is set within the context of three English friends meeting to appreciate the ruins of Rome, each with contrasting views in contemporary religious debates. Consolations was an influential attempt to forge a new form for speculation in science. The discussions on the vision expose contrasts between the different points of view, very much along the lines of William Paley's Natural Theology and similar works. Contemporary readers used Consolations to explore the place of science in understanding subjects as controversial as the relations between matter, vitality, and the afterlife."