Six Lectures on Light Delivered in America in 1872-1973 by TYNDALL, John - 1873

London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1873. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. 8vo (189 x 121 mm). xiii [1], 277 [1] pp., 1 leaf of adverts and 32 pp. publisher's catalogue dated March 1873; text illustrations and diagrams. Original publisher's cloth, spine with gilt lettering and small paper shelf-mark label, blindstamed boards, all edges gilt, brown endpapers (corners and spine ends lightly bumped, spine sunned, boards a trifle spotted). Text crisp and clean with little age-toning only. Provenance: Wigan Free Public Library (large bookplate to front pastedown, blind stamps to title and some text pages). Inscribed by Tyndall "The Lady Claud Hamilton / Homage of the Author / July 1873"* on half-title. A very good+ copy. ----

FIRST EDITION. The book features six lectures on light which Tyndall delivered in the United States in 1872-3. They explore a wide range of ideas in a non-technical way, from the principal laws and phenomena of light through magnetism and light scattering, to analytical spectroscopy. The book ends with a series of essays on special topics and includes a detailed index.
*Lord Claud Hamilton PC (1813-1884) was a British Conservative politician. He notably served as Treasurer of the Household in 1852 and between 1858 and 1859 and as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household between 1866 and 1868. The eldest of his three daughters, Louisa Charlotte Hamilton (1845-1940), married physicist John Tyndall on 29 February 1876, when he was in his 50s, and she just over 30. Tyndall had met Louisa through the social connections of the Royal Institution, which her mother, Lady Claud Hamilton, born Elizabeth Emma Proby (1821-1900) joined in 1874. Tyndall socialised with them at their country house Heathfield Park in Sussex and travelled with them in the Alps. Lady Hamilton is best known for her translation from the French of René Vallery-Radot biography of Louis Pasteur (Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labours, 1885) of with John Tyndall was the editor.