Enlightened Joseph Priestley : A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804

Schofield, Robert E.

ISBN 10: 0271036257 / ISBN 13: 9780271036250

Published by Penn State University Press, 2004

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 7108794-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Enlightened Joseph Priestley : A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271036257
• ISBN 13: 9780271036250
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In The Enlightened Joseph Priestley Robert Schofield completes his two-volume biography of one of the great figures of the English Enlightenment. The first volume, published in 1997, covered the first forty years of Joseph Priestley’s life in England. In this second volume, Schofield surveys the mature years of Priestley, including the achievements that were to make him famous―the discovery of oxygen, the defenses of Unitarianism, and the political liberalism that characterized his later life. He also recounts Priestley’s flight to Pennsylvania in 1794 and the final years of his life spent along the Susquehanna in Northumberland. Together, the two volumes will stand as the standard biography of Priestley for years to come.

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), a contemporary and friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, exceeded even these polymaths in the breadth of his curiosity and learning. Yet Priestley is often portrayed in negative terms, as a restless intellect, incapable of confining himself to any single task, without force or originality, and marked by hasty and superficial thought. In The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, he emerges as a man who was more than a lucky empiricist in science, more than a naive political liberal, more than an exhaustive compiler of superficial evidence in militant support of Unitarianism. In fact, he was learned in an extraordinary variety of subjects, from grammar, education, aesthetics, metaphysics, politics, and theology to natural philosophy. Priestley was, in fact, a man of the Enlightenment.

About the Author

Robert E. Schofield is Professor of History Emeritus at Iowa State University, where he was also Director of the Program in History of Technology and Science. The first volume of his Priestley biography, The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley, was published by Penn State Press in 1997. He is also the editor of A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) (1966).