There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play and is touched upon in these phenomena. There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.
So are we made dependent not merely upon our fellow-creatures, but upon our fellow-existers, all Nature being tied together by the laws that make one part conduce to the good of another.
(Lecture VI, pp. 167–8)
Michael Faraday’s The Chemical History of a Candle must rank as one of the most popular science books ever published. Based on the final series of Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution to be delivered by Faraday, then in his seventieth year, it has never been out of print in English since it was first published in March 1861. Frequently anthologized, it has appeared in more than a dozen other languages, most recently in a new Japanese edition and the first Portuguese translation.2 It has been cited as an example of good practice in science communication3 and the Marxist crystallographer Desmond Bernal (1901–71) claimed that it was one of the things that inspired him, because of the explosions, at the age of seven to become a scientist.4 The structure of its title has been imitated by others, for instance by George Porter (1920–2002), Director of the Royal Institution from 1966 to 1986 and another scientist fond of explosions, who entitled his 1976–7 Christmas Lectures ‘The Natural History of a Sunbeam.’ Furthermore, the eminent chemical writer Peter Atkins has examined the text from the point of view of modern science.5
This Introduction explores this little book, less than 36,000 words in length, in terms of the development of the Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution, Faraday’s life and work, and the cultural and social contexts in which it was published and read. As such this edition should, in part, be viewed as a contribution towards understanding the development of popular science, which has attracted much historical attention recently.6
The Christmas Lectures evolved out of Afternoon Lectures that had been delivered in the Royal Institution since 1800, the year after its founding at a meeting held on 7 March 1799 in the Soho Square house of the President of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks (1743–1820). Established during the war against France that lasted almost continuously from 1793 to 1815, the original purpose of the Royal Institution was to provide lectures and scientific advice to help support and improve agriculture, industry, and the Empire.7
By June of 1799 the Royal Institution had purchased the head lease on 21 Albemarle Street in Mayfair, where, almost uniquely for a scientific institution, it has remained ever since. The building first had to be converted from a gentleman’s town house, with parts dating back to the early eighteenth century, into a scientific institution, with lecture theatres, laboratories, display areas, libraries, meeting rooms, and so on.8 The construction of the semi-circular steeply raked lecture theatre on the first floor, designed by Thomas Webster (1773–1844), was completed by 1802 when the caricaturist James Gillray (1757–1815) depicted a rather exciting Afternoon Lecture (Plate 1). On occasion this theatre could hold more than a thousand and it remained fundamentally unaltered until the Royal Institution’s electric substation exploded on 29 December 1927 just after a Christmas Lecture had been delivered by Edward Neville da Costa Andrade (1887–1971).
PLATE 1 James Gillray, ‘Scientific Researches: New Discoveries in Pneumaticks! or Experimental Lecture on Powers of Air’ (1802)
This lecture theatre has been, and continues to be, the place where the Royal Institution has carried out one of its original missions of communicating science to a general audience. Shortly after its foundation the Royal Institution was given a great boost in doing this when Humphry Davy (1778–1829) joined in 1801. His Afternoon Lectures were extremely popular and large numbers flocked to see and hear him. Davy, an immensely attractive lecturer, firmly established the Royal Institution as the venue in London for spectacular and engaging lectures on science. He married a wealthy widow in 1812 and was thus able to retire from being Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution at the age of thirty-four, although he retained considerable influence there for the remainder of his life. Thus, it was on Davy’s recommendation in the spring of 1813 that Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was appointed an assistant in the laboratory. Although Faraday had recently completed an apprenticeship as a bookbinder, he had decided instead to pursue a career in science and eventually applied to Davy for a job in the Royal Institution.9
Although Davy was succeeded as Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution by William Thomas Brande (1788–1866), it was Faraday who eventually came to inherit Davy’s mantle as the most popular scientific lecturer in London.10 Faraday was promoted through the Royal Institution hierarchy and was appointed Director of the Laboratory in 1825. His outstanding research including his discoveries, amongst others, of electromagnetic rotations and induction (the principles behind the electric motor, transformer, and generator) led to the establishment of the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry created especially for him in 1833.
Faraday did not deliver his first lecture in the Royal Institution until late 1824 when he joined Brande (who was becoming increasingly committed to his work for the Royal Mint) in giving morning courses of chemistry lectures mostly for medical students from the nearby medical schools in Windmill Street and St George’s Hospital. His first lecture was in a course of nineteen lectures on the metals. In the audience was Roderick Murchison (1792–1871), then changing career from fox hunting to geology. He was clearly not impressed with Faraday’s first effort, noting that he mainly read, was too diffident, and used too many colloquialisms.11
With the exception of a series of lectures delivered at the London Institution in 1827 (the same year that he began delivering courses of Afternoon Lectures at the Royal Institution) and his lectures to cadets at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from 1830 to 1852,12 all Faraday’s lectures were delivered in the Royal Institution. In the mid-1820s he initiated the Friday Evening Discourses,13 a series which, like the Christmas Lectures began about the same time, continues to this day. And it is clear from contemporary accounts and from statistical analysis of lecture attendance, that Faraday’s quality as a lecturer improved from his early poor start to be one of the star attractions in London during the middle third of the nineteenth century.
The Christmas Lectures were specifically tailored for what was then termed juveniles—which meant in the age range of 15–20, though this probably went down in later years.14 The original intention in 1825, according to the minutes of a meeting of the Royal Institution Managers, was to provide ‘a set of Twenty two Lectures on Natural Philosophy suited to a Juvenile Auditory, during the Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide recesses’.15 It was agreed that John Millington (1779–1868), the Professor of Mechanics at the Royal Institution, would deliver the first series. Very little is known about that series and the second, given the following year by a now obscure but then popular astronomy lecturer named John Wallis ( c. 1787–1852),16 is equally little documented. The Royal Institution ran a second Easter series in 1827, given by the Institution’s Professor of Natural History, John Harwood (c.1794–1854), but this was not a success and from then onwards Juvenile Lectures were given only around Christmas.17 Although they remained officially denominated as the Juvenile Lectures, it is clear from correspondence that certainly by the 1850s they were being familiarly termed as the Christmas Lectures and by the 1860s in print.18
The third series in 1827–8, and the first by Faraday, was on the subject of chemistry. Thereafter he dominated the Christmas Lectures until the early 1860s delivering a further eighteen series and in many ways establishing the format of the lectures with each series usually comprising six one-hour lectures. Brande delivered seven series between 1834–5 and 1850–1 when he fully retired from the Royal Institution and Faraday gave all the other series during the 1850s. Their successors, John Tyndall (1820–93) and James Dewar (1842–1923), delivered twelve and nine series, respectively.
By the 1850s the Christmas Lectures had become sufficiently well known for Faraday to be depicted in an engraving, based on a painting (Plate 2) by Alexander Blaikley (1816–1903), published in the Illustrated London News delivering a lecture before Prince Albert (1819–61), the Prince of Wales (1841–1910), and Prince Alfred (1844–1900), not paying as much attention as one might hope.19 (A version of this image was used on the Bank of England £20 note depicting Faraday issued during the 1990s.) By the 1860–1 series, Faraday and the Christmas Lectures had become indissolubly linked in the public mind. In a profile of Faraday, the Illustrated London News in early 1861 commented:
PLATE 2 Alexander Blaikley, Faraday delivering the Christmas Lecture on 27 December 1855, before Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, and Prince Alfred
For the last eight seasons Professor Faraday has undertaken this task with a modesty and a power which it is impossible to praise too much. There can be no greater treat to any one fond of scientific pursuits than to attend a course of these lectures.20
It was by no means a foregone conclusion that Faraday would deliver the 1860–1 series of Christmas Lecture. Because of his generally poor health, which had twice led to the postponement of his first lecture in the previous series,21 both he and his wife, Sarah (1800–79), had hoped that he would not.22 But, as she wrote to a nephew in mid-November 1860, because, for reasons of ill health, the Royal Institution’s Secretary, John Barlow (1798–1869), had resigned ‘it was thought not good for your Uncle to give up any thing he could keep at the same time.’23 It had been announced to the Managers of the Royal Institution on 5 November 1860 that Faraday would deliver the lectures24 and shortly afterwards this was made public. He delivered them, for a fee of 50 guineas,25 on 27 and 29 December 1860 and 1, 3, 5, and 8 January 1861 to audiences of 720, 671, 664, 630, 740, and 658, respectively.26
Presumably because he had not been expecting to deliver this series he, like all good lecturers, recycled his material from earlier Christmas Lectures. The facsimile of his notebook at the end of this volume includes the lecture cards from his Christmas Lectures of 1848–9 and 1854–5 as well as the 1860–1 series; this heavy usage doubtless accounts for the burn marks on some of the pages! Indeed Faraday first lectured on the candle in his course of Royal Institution Afternoon Lectures that he delivered in June 1831, ‘Upon Some Points of Domestic Chemical Philosophy’.27 He repeated this course (with a new notebook28) nearly twenty years later in the spring of 1850.
One of the reasons Faraday became such a popular and attractive lecturer was that he took infinite pains in preparing his lectures and in studying the components of what constituted a good lecture. This interest in the art of lecturing went back to his earliest days working at the Royal Institution. In a set of letters written to his early friend Benjamin Abbott (1793–1870) in June 1813 Faraday described, based on his experiences and observations at the Royal Institution and elsewhere, the environment and the qualities required for lecturers and lectures.29 Indeed so apposite are these comments, even if Faraday did not always follow them himself, that they have been abstracted and included in at least two short pamphlets.30
Faraday’s approach to lecturing is best summarized in an account published by the conchologist Lovell Reeve (1814–65) in 1863:
He never told his listeners of an experiment, he always showed it them, however simple and well-known it might have been.
“If,” Dr. Faraday once said to a young lecturer, “I said to my audience, ‘this stone will fall to the ground if I open my hand,’ I should open my hand and let it fall. Take nothing for granted as known; inform the eye at the same time as you address the ear.” This was the great secret of Faraday’s success.31
This description fits perfectly his lectures on the candle. Starting with an extraordinary familiar object Faraday built up an understanding of the universe as the two epigraphs to this Introduction suggest.
Faraday also responded to his auditors and external events as he delivered the lectures. Thus Frances Fawcett (c.1820–97), who was in the audience, sent Faraday two Japanese candles, which he displayed at the start of his final lecture.32 The third lecture was delivered on New Year’s day 1861 shortly after a particularly cold period—the temperature on Christmas Day fell to 16°F (-9°C)33—came to a temporary end and the thaw clearly caused many burst pipes to which Faraday referred (Lecture III, p. 59). These extraneous events lent his lectures both a sense of spontaneity and attractiveness that contributed to the enjoyment of his audience and to their ultimate long-term reputation.
A further reason for his popularity is that he told his audiences what they wanted to hear and in particular his lectures are shot through with his theistic view of the world. Faraday belonged to a small sect of literal Christians known in England as the Sandemanians and in Scotland as the Glasites.34 Faraday was born into this sect; made his confession of faith in the church in 1821, served as a Deacon between 1832 and 1840, and then as an Elder until 1844. On 21 October 1860 he was elected an Elder for the second time and the additional work that this entailed may provide an additional reason for he and Sarah not wishing him to deliver the 1860–1 Christmas Lectures.
In his notes for the lectures Faraday provided an explicit theistic view of his subject. He found ‘that the flame is not always the simple constant shaped thing that a guarded candle presents—it offers us motion and a variety of forms and these, combined with its beauty make it the most vivid figure of life or spirit that the material world presents’ (Notebook, opening 2) and later:
What wonders cluster round a candle lighted or unlighted what strange and powerful knowledge becomes ours as we trace out and consider its powers. What instruments of good (and of evil) are thus placed in our hands and what an open door it offers to us into the wisdom of God in the creation. May it be ours to profit by these things and whilst we enjoy the pleasures and the marvels they present to us not to forget the power that made them. (Notebook, opening 19)
Faraday, as a member of the Sandemanian Church, wanted to understand the laws of nature that God had written into the universe at the Creation. His scientific research was directed not just to making experimental discoveries, but sought a basic understanding of the forces that operated in the universe and their relation to each other. In his lectures he precisely mirrored his research as he publicly and explicitly expressed this theistic view of the world.
Throughout his career Faraday was careful to ensure that his lectures were widely and extensively reported in the print media, especially in the influential weeklies such as the Literary Gazette and the Athenaeum. 35 For example, following correspondence with the journalist and novelist Charles Dickens (1812–70), it was arranged that the 1848–9 candle series would be reported in condensed form in the first volume of Household Words.36 Furthermore, Dickens also condensed the 1850 version of Faraday’s ‘Domestic Chemical Philosophy’ lectures.37 In both cases Faraday lent him his lecture notes,38 for which generosity Dickens presented him with a copy of David Copperfield when it was published towards the end of 1850.39
A few years later, in 1853, the chemist John Scoffern (1814–82) published The Subject Matter of a Course of Six Lectures on the Non-metallic Elements by Professor Faraday. This was based on his 1852 Afternoon Lectures and Faraday lent him also his notes.40 The key word here is ‘subject’ since this was not a verbatim record of the lectures, but editorially expanded by Scoffern because as he wrote in the preface:
that a chemical lecturer, more perhaps than any other, possessed a means of demonstrating facts not available to the essayist—the demonstration of experiment—that mute eloquence of action which silently compresses whole pages of written lore into one short act of manipulation, and renders verbal explanation unnecessary.41
Nevertheless, publishers, realizing the popularity of Faraday’s Christmas Lectures, sought to persuade him to allow them to be published, reportedly offering him almost unlimited terms for the copyright.42 Until late 1859 Faraday declined all such invitations being convinced that it was impossible to turn live lectures, with large numbers of experimental demonstrations, into print form. Even as late as January 1859 he wrote to one publisher, in terms very similar as Scoffern’s, about his rejection of an earlier offer and the problems of turning lectures into text:
[It was] proposed to take them by short hand & so save me trouble -but I knew that would be a thorough failure. Even if I cared to give time to the revision of the M.S. still the Lectures without the experiments & the vivacity of speaking would fall far behind those in the lecture room as to effect:43
Faraday’s change of mind may have been connected with his opposition to the rise of spiritualism, especially table turning, in the early 1850s. Many linked these phenomena to electricity and magnetism and Faraday was deluged with requests for an explanation in these terms. After attending a couple of séances, he concluded that table turning was due to an involuntary muscular action on the part of the participants. He reported this in a letter to The Times and an article in the Athenaeum, 44 which resulted in his being sent even more letters attesting to the reality of the phenomena. Faraday was appalled at the existence of such ignorance of scientific knowledge in an otherwise well-educated country. Furthermore, as a Sandemanian, his religious beliefs were also offended.45 Faraday’s response was to help arrange in 1854 a special course of lectures at the Royal Institution delivered by a number of eminent savants to demonstrate the value of scientific education; his contribution was a lecture on mental education.46
Having set out his agenda, he pursued it actively over the next decade or so in a number of ways including at some point agreeing for his 1859–60 Christmas Lectures on ‘The Various Forces of Matter’ to be published.
The key agent in the publishing process was, ironically in view of his later strong commitment to psychical research, the young chemist and journalist William Crookes (1832–1919),47 whom Faraday seems to have first met at one of the séances.48 In late 1859 Crookes had founded the weekly Chemical News, which for the first year of publication was published by C. Mitchell and Company and printed by Spottiswoode and Company, was twelve pages in length, and cost threepence. On this basis, judging by the accounts for four issues in mid-1860, the financial position of the Chemical News, while not spectacular, was at least sound.49 It was at this time that Crookes decided to expand the paper to increase its scope,50 but this necessitated a change of publishers and printers. After negotiations it was agreed that from the first issue of 1861 publishing would be transferred to Griffin, Bohn and Company, printing to Reid and Pardon, the number of pages increased to sixteen and the price to fourpence. Crookes was to receive three and a half guineas per week for editorial expenses and the profits were to be split equally between the publishers, the printers, and Crookes.51
Always in need of copy at the commencement of the Chemical News, Crookes persuaded Faraday to allow one of his staff to take shorthand notes of his Christmas Lectures on ‘The Various Forces of Matter’. These were then published in the Chemical News 52 where each lecture occupied roughly a quarter of an issue. Crookes then collected them together in book form and this was published by Griffin as A Course of Six Lectures on the Various Forces of Matter. Faraday, however, ensured that it was made clear in the preface ‘that the act of publishing is not mine’.53 Nevertheless, these were thus the first series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures to be published verbatim as a book. Crookes had managed to solve the problem of how to turn an illustrated live lecture, with experimental demonstrations, into printed form for a popular market.
That Faraday was satisfied with the outcome is confirmed by the fact that, by return of post, he instantly acceded to Crookes’s request made in mid-November 186054 for the procedure was repeated with his lectures on ‘The Chemical History of a Candle’:
I take your request as a great compliment and as far as I can give it you have my full permission[.] My only fear is that I may not do credit to your good opinion. I know that my memory fails and I know that the character of the lectures must fail with that. I had wished to cease lecturing altogether but circumstances [i.e., Barlow’s resignation] induce me to consent for this season. The wish on any account to withdraw is a trouble to me in some sense for I really have had great pleasure in talking to the children. However I will do my best[.]55
While Faraday was delivering the lectures at the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861, they started to be reported in the Morning Post 56 and the British Medical Journal, 57 whilst the second lecture was reported in The Times. 58 These reports prompted some correspondence. The Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll, 1832–98) who had met Faraday (and indeed photographed him59) at the 1860 meeting of the British Association in Oxford enquired about capillarity, which formed a significant component of the first lecture.60 The south London physician James Cregeen (c.1827–68) told Faraday about a primitive candle still used by his 94-year-old grandfather on the Isle of Man, a type that Faraday had not mentioned in his lectures.61 These kinds of letters do not exist for earlier lecture series and suggests that right from the beginning the Candle lectures would attract much interest.
Crookes published the verbatim lectures in the first six numbers of the Chemical News for 186162 (and very quickly the text crossed the Atlantic to be published in Scientific American 63). Crookes now had to turn them into a book and at the start of February he wrote to the Glasgow-based industrial chemist Charles Hanson Greville Williams (1829–1910), who had written the preface to Forces of Matter, to provide a preface for the Candle. 64 Curiously, in both Forces of Matter and Candle, the prefaces were initialled ‘W.C.’, the reverse of Williams’ initials. Crookes had to chase Williams for this nearly three weeks later65 but had received it by 25 February. 66 The lectures were published, again by Griffin, late in March 1861 at a cost of three shillings and sixpence. 67 Presumably to make a respectable-sized volume, Crookes included a Friday Evening Discourse by Faraday ‘On Platinum’, which had also been published in the Chemical News. 68 The total length of the book was 208 pages, of which the candle lectures took up 171. In late August the Candle was published in New York at a cost of 
by Harper 69(who had also issued Forces of Matter) and, presumably around the same time, by Dawson in Montreal.
Little is known of the financial arrangements between lecturer, editor, publishers, and printers for any of these publications. It would appear, however, that Faraday had transferred gratis his copyright in both books to Crookes since he used his share of the income to support the finances of the Chemical News, which had become precarious because of its expansion during the opening months of 1861.70 Crookes published the following year’s Christmas Lectures, by Tyndall, in the Chemical News, 71 but this was not turned into a book (by that time Griffin had left the partnership72). The 1862–3 series by the chemist Edward Frankland (1825–99) was not published at all because Frankland demanded a fee for proof-reading his lectures, which Crookes calculated would entail production costs of £45 7s—‘more than double the amount the three previous Xmas courses of Lectures have cost, each’.73
No evidence has so far been found by which we can form an opinion of the relationship between content of the lectures as delivered in the Royal Institution’s theatre as the third outing for Faraday’s notes, as taken down in shorthand, and as edited by Crookes; nor do we know whether Faraday had the opportunity afterwards to make alterations to the text before publication, though if he did it would seem, because of the spontaneity of the published lectures, that they were minimal. While there is a clear structural relationship between the notes and the printed text, determining this precisely is impossible. Furthermore, the notes do bear traces of development over their three uses. For example on opening 10, Faraday moves a whole set of experiments to Lecture VI, but it is impossible to determine whether this was on their second or third use.
However, in the details there are some significant differences between notes and text. For example towards the end of the first lecture and at the start of the second, Faraday referred to a diagram of a lamp flame by ‘old Hooker’ (Lecture II, p. 31). This is clearly a reference to the magnificent image (Plate 3) that Robert Hooke (1635–1703) included at the end of his Lampas of 1677.74 Though there is no reference in his notes to Faraday displaying this in his lectures, the Royal Institution’s library does possess a copy. With a couple of honourable exceptions, the somewhat bizarre error of referring to ‘Hooker’ (doubtless originally attributable to misreading a shorthand note) has been carried over into subsequent printings, translations, and anthologies.75
PLATE 3 Image of a lamp flame from Robert Hooke, Lampas (1677)
Hooke is one of the very few individuals to be named in the text. Indeed the only people to whom Faraday referred directly were his long-serving assistant, Charles Anderson (c.1791–1866), a former assistant Thomas Pearsall (1805–83), the French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850), the Swiss chemist and lamp inventor Aimé Argand (1750–1803), the chemists Joseph Black (1728–99) and Humphry Davy (with Humphry consistently misspelt with the additional e), the Royal Engineer Colonel Charles Pasley (1780–1861), whom Faraday had advised on how to destroy the wreck of HMS Royal George, which was a danger to navigation at Spithead,76 the engineer Joshua Field (1786–1863), and Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), the Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, where Faraday referred to the suggestion in his Directions to Servants (1745) of writing on the ceiling using a candle.77 Swift’s text had been frequently reprinted and anthologized and Faraday presumably felt that his audience would understand the reference and so did not specifically refer to the text. Whether, on the other hand, he expected his audience to be aware that Otto von Guericke (1602–86) had first demonstrated the power of the atmosphere on evacuated brass hemispheres (Lecture V, p. 125) or of Davy’s connection with the Herculaneum papyri (Lecture VI, p. 169) must be open to question.
Thus in the lectures much of the science that Faraday demonstrated, including his own discoveries, had little or no provenance. This provides a strong contrast with Faraday’s publication of research results where he was punctilious in ascribing priority of discovery. His not doing this in the lectures probably helped contribute to their long-term success and to their popularity in other countries as it reduced the level of pre-existing knowledge required by its readers to appreciate them. On the other hand, Faraday, in effect, removed, or at least minimized, the role of human agency in the construction of scientific knowledge. So by concentrating on the content of science, rather than the processes by which it was constructed, he provided a particular view of science and its relationship with society.
Furthermore, in the printed Candle lectures there are few explicit theological references, though nevertheless there are hints of Faraday’s views, as the opening quotations indicate. (And can the second be read as his riposte to the theory of evolution by natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin (1809–82) a year or so before and of which Faraday was not an admirer?78) Although, unlike in his notes, Faraday did not use the word ‘God’ in the Candle, he does refer to respiration as the ‘process going on within us which we cannot do without, either day or night, which is so provided for by the Author of all things that He has arranged that it shall be independent of all will’ (Lecture VI, p. 162) as well as to ‘the economy of creation’ (Lecture V, p. 130) and the ‘laws that Nature has made for our guidance’ (Lecture IV, p. 110), all of which, in the 1860s, could only be interpreted in theological terms, but they are toned down compared to his notes and indeed his overall view of the universe.
With one notable exception the reviews in the British print media were short and enthusiastic. The Scotsman opined, pace Hamlet, ‘There is more in a candle scientifically viewed, than is dreamt of in most people’s philosophy,’79 while the Daily News noted, ‘Once a year the greatest natural philosopher in Great Britain gives a course of lectures at the Royal Institution to a juvenile audience—lectures as honest, serious, and philosophical as if they were prepared for the Royal Society, and yet so simple and engaging that the youngest hearer is charmed’.80 The Glasgow Daily Herald picked up on the reference to Swift and continued that the Candle will ‘be eagerly welcomed by many readers, who turn in despair from dry chronicles of scientific terms called popular works, but which, in a great many instances, are about as interesting as street directories’.81 The Bookseller commented that the ‘lectures appear very much in the colloquial style that originally gave them popularity and charm’.82 The Spectator, whilst critical of Faraday’s too easy identification of the phenomena of respiration and combustion, opined that they were ‘necessarily among the very best examples extant in print of the art of popularizing science’.83
The one exception to these paeans of praise in these and other newspapers was The Critic of 6 April 1861.84 This long review was hostile to the point of being an ad hominem attack on Crookes: ‘who is Mr. Crookes? Why should he have tacked his almost unknown and altogether undistinguished name upon Dr. Faraday’s lectures?’ The unknown reviewer was especially angered by the view expressed by Williams in the preface that ‘the child who masters these Lectures knows more of fire than Aristotle’ and consequently dismissed the value of the lectures in general as ‘one of the mischiefs of a newspaper popularity’. Furthermore, the reviewer criticized Faraday in general for going outside his sphere of expertise especially as regards spiritualism and specifically in these lectures of ‘the continual dragging down of the subject’—a complaint all too familiar to today’s science communicators. Though this was one of the earliest reviews to be published, and upset Crookes,85 it does not seem to have made any impact on the generally favourable reception accorded to the Candle.
What the review in The Critic does do, however, is to throw some light on the intended readership for the Candle. It was noticeably not reviewed in heavyweight journals (such as the Quarterly and Edinburgh reviews) or in the scientific research journals (for example, Philosophical Magazine), but in newspapers; hence the rather sniffy comments in The Critic about the culture of the readers of newspapers. The Critic, for all its trenchancy, was correct in identifying where the readership of the Candle lay. It lay not in what it clearly viewed as high culture, but amongst the newspaper reading public (hence the pricing of the lectures, which was a quarter of the third edition of Darwin’s Origin published at exactly the same time). That this was the intended readership is confirmed by copies being quickly acquired by libraries such as Mudie’s Circulating86 and the Nottingham Mechanics’ Institute,87 while further afield it was soon available to the United Service Library in Calcutta.88 It would appear that what the anonymous reviewer in The Critic was complaining about was the readership, possibly that it existed at all, and the way it was being addressed in the Candle.
In the United States, then at the start of its Civil War, it was different in that a significant number of reviews appeared in the religious press doubtless because of the theological reading of the Candle. Most of the reviews picked up on the opening quotation to this introduction. The American Quarterly Church Review noted that Faraday showed ‘how the commonest objects in Nature may be analysed and their wonderful properties and powers brought within the comprehension even of the young’, before praising the lectures for their clearness and lack of pedantry.89 The Presbyterian Quarterly Review hoped that ‘all the boys and girls, and a number of grown people will read it’, 90 while The Christian Review, in a longer than typical article, hoped ‘that every household blessed with reading boys and girls could have a copy of it, to compete, as it would in attractiveness, with the silly stories now devoured with such avidity’.91 The Church Monthly commented that
In the season that commemorates the birth of Him on whom all the triumphs and progress of knowledge depend, the wise and the simple meet together. God’s power and love are shown in a little and common thing. The style is a model for those who try to interest children in the grander mysteries of faith, and the holy things of duty.92
The secular press was also enthusiastic. The New York Daily Tribune devoted three columns to its review including providing copious extracts.93 The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist stated that ‘The little book is worth its weight in gold’,94 while The North American Review believed that the lectures were ‘a series of “object-lessons” well worthy of the author’s world-wide reputation’.95
With such glowing reviews it is scarcely surprising that the Candle was rapidly reprinted and translated and those in the major languages were also frequently reprinted. What is more surprising is that these processes continue to the present day. Because the Candle is seen as a popular book, the bibliographical information that publishers included as they brought out successive editions left, on occasion, something to be desired—there are some editions where no year of publication was given in the imprint. Furthermore, while national libraries (usually) hold a first edition, more often than not they did not accession later printings and editions. Hence what we can say about the publication history of the Candle is a minimum and represents the surface of what is probably a much greater whole.
New English editions appeared in 1863 and 1865, both published by Griffin. The former was combined, though separately paginated, with Forces of Matter and included an engraving of Faraday with a battery. The 1865 edition was printed for the first time by Bell and Bain of Glasgow, who also printed the many editions, starting in 1874, published by Chatto and Windus, who continued issuing it until the early twentieth century. All of these had the preface signed ‘W. Crookes’ and appeared in a larger font than those published by Griffin. Quite how Chatto came to be the publisher is not clear, especially as the copyright status of the Candle at that time is hard to understand.96 During the twentieth century it was published by a variety of companies including Hutchison (in their popular classics series, 1907), Dent (in their Kings’ treasuries of literature, 1920), Kegan Paul (in a Basic English edition, 1933), and the Scientific Book Guild (1960). In the United States Harper continued publication into the twentieth century although Routledge issued an edition in the 1870s. In the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, American publishers have included Viking (1960), Siemens Communications (1981) and Dover (2002). English language anthologies that have published extracts from the Candle include Science before Darwin: A Nineteenth-Century Anthology (1963),97 the Faber Book of Science (1995),98 The Philosopher’s Tree (1999),99 Nineteenth Century Science (2000),100 and Christmas at the Royal Institution (2007).101
In terms of translations and places of publication outside Britain and North America, the following table summarizes, in chronological order of first publication, what has appeared:
The Candle is still published, read, and translated, and evidently retains its popularity throughout the world. This is unusual, to say the least, for a science book now celebrating its sesquicentenary. Apart from fiction and Darwin’s Origin, there can be very few other books from the mid-nineteenth century that have a modern readership beyond academic experts and students. How can we account for this? Reading Faraday’s Candle as the theological text he originally intended no long applies. In the early twenty-first century very few people could, or indeed would be able to do so; that approach to the natural world is no longer fashionable.
It seems to me that there is no single explanation for the Candle’s enduring popularity, but that several factors are in play. Although the initial readership would have interpreted the Candle theologically, Faraday, as discussed above, did not make the text overtly so in this regard; hence its transition into a purely scientific text was a smooth one. Second, unlike Forces of Matter, which in the twentieth century has been far less frequently re-published, and where the science is now dated, very little of the science in the Candle has been superseded. Indeed in these lectures technologies that were then new, especially in their scientific applications, such as photography, electric power, and light, all of which Faraday used, give them a distinctly modern feel. Furthermore, the air in the Royal Institution’s lecture theatre still weighs a ton (Lecture V, p. 121), the processes of combustion are still understood much in the way that Faraday described them, water is still composed of oxygen and hydrogen, horses and humans still exhale carbon dioxide, and London as a whole continues to pour millions of tons of it into the atmosphere each day (Lecture VI, p. 166)—surely something that lends the lectures a contemporary relevance. And such relevance doubtless explains why the Candle is still used by science students in, for instance, Japan and China.102 On the other hand Faraday did not realize that burning candles produced carbon in the form of Buckmasterfullerenes, C60, not discovered until 1985. Nor did he address issues such as how a candle ignited or its reaction rates which can be understood only in terms of modern quantum theory using computational techniques.103
The text is well written and is regarded as a fine example of literature in its own right, evinced by it appearing in the Faber Book of Science. But, finally, it is not some arid text, but exciting, engaging, spontaneous, and fun, including many explosions. It does convey something of what it must have been like to have been present at Faraday’s lectures in the Royal Institution’s lecture theatre in the coldest winter for many years. In Crookes, Faraday found an editor who could achieve what for years he regarded as impossible: of turning live lectures into print. Hence, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the story is that Faraday had the courage to change his mind and so bring into existence one of the classic texts of world science.
