Humphry Davy, Jane Marcet and the Cultures of Romantic-Era Science

Using the career of Humphry Davy, the era’s most famous natural philosopher, I examine the Romantic construction of the scientific genius and explore, beyond it, several of the cultures in which enquiry into nature was practised in the period. I argue that Jane Marcet introduced Davy to a more gender-balanced, continental scientific circle and that her work Conversations on Chemistry (1805) effected a feminization and democratization of the “man of science,” helping to inaugurate a new era in which mass print encouraged both women and men from socially-excluded groups to access scientific knowledge and practice.