Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820This is a study of the 18th-century engagements with the climate, showing how people and scientists made their way in an environment of inclement weather and how they worked to make this inclemency an anchor of their local and national identity. The book's approach is based on the analyses of the religious, political and scientific readings of strange weather. In these appropriations the weather was up for grabs as its public accessibility undermined claims to its sole possession by either priests, pamphleteers or philosophers. This study presents meteorological science as part of the English public's emotion, represented by 18th-century spouts, storms and fireballs, and expressed in the language of ordinary men, women and children. As a result, the Georgian weather emerges within the moral landscapes of an outdoor society rather than in the laboratory analyses of atmospheric gases. The book follows the conditions which sustained this perception and shows the ways in which it clashed with - and was eventually displaced by - laboratory analyses and instrumental observations. |
Contents
LIST OF FIGURES | ix |
LIST OF BOXES | xi |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xiii |
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
IMPERFECT MIXTURES | 14 |
Meteorologica | 16 |
Early modern meteors | 22 |
A dominion of exhalations | 28 |
PROVINCIAL WEATHER | 103 |
The Rev Borlase and his network of correspondents | 105 |
Calendars diaries narratives | 113 |
Stationary intelligencers | 120 |
RUSTIC SEASONS | 125 |
An impasse in theory | 126 |
The weather in order | 129 |
Shepherds as experts | 131 |
OBSERVING THE EXTRAORDINARY | 33 |
Wonders marvels and ominous meteors | 36 |
Vulgar Baconians | 44 |
Rehabilitating the unusual | 50 |
PUBLIC METEORS | 55 |
Providential visitations | 56 |
The Great Storm | 59 |
Aerial appearances and astounding apparitions | 64 |
Lord Derwentwaters lights | 68 |
MEMORIALS OF UNCOMMON ACCIDENTS | 78 |
Curious plotting | 81 |
Collectable weather | 90 |
The common voice | 97 |
Other editions - View all
Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820 Vladimir Jankovic Limited preview - 2001 |
Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820 Vladimir Jankovic Limited preview - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
Account agricultural ancient antiquarian apparitions appeared argued Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's atmosphere Aurora Borealis authors Bacon barometer Borlase's British Cambridge University Press causes century Childrey chorographic clouds Concerning Cornwall County culture Description Diary Discourse early modern earth earthquakes Edmund Halley Effects eighteenth eighteenth-century electrical England English Essays exhalations extraordinary fiery meteors fire fireballs Georgics Halley Henry Ibid James John Journal Kirwan knowledge late Letter London Ludgvan Manchester marvels Meteor Seen meteoric reportage meteoric tradition meteorological Meteorological Observations narratives Natural History natural philosophy naturalists northern lights Oxford phenomena Phil Philosophical Transactions Plot's political popular prodigies prognostics provincial quoted rain Ralph Thoresby reason region Remarkable reports Richard Richard Kirwan Robert Robert Plot Royal Society Science scientific seventeenth seventeenth-century Simon Schaffer social Speculum Britanniae Storm strange sublunary theological theory Thomas Thoresby Thunder and Lightning tion Trans unusual vapors weather Whiston William Borlase William Derham wind Wonderful wrote