Index

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NOTE: Works by Richard Holmes (RH) appear directly under title; works by others under author’s name

Abbey, Richard, 229, 231

Abelard, Peter, 297

Ackroyd, Peter, 47, 58, 309; Dickens, 60

Age of Wonder, The (RH): genesis, 16; presented to Royal Society, 35; subjects and aims, 43–4

Ainsworth, Harrison, 100

Airy, Sir George, 211

Albinson, Cassandra, 265, 273

Alexander the Great, 49–50

Allingham, William, 312

Allston, Washington, 102–3

Alzheimer’s disease, 91

Ampère, André Marie, 206

Analytical Review, 181, 190

Ancients, The (group), 310, 312, 327, 331

Anning, Mary, 115

Anti-Jacobin Review, 181–2, 184

Apreece, Jane, 163

Arago, François, 205, 207

Aristotle, 79

Arnold, Matthew, 246

Associationism, 83, 86–8

astronomy see cosmology

Athenaeum (magazine), 202

Atherley, Arthur, 270

Aubrey, John, 47–8, 125; Brief Lives, 48, 57

Auden, W.H., 35

Audubon, John James, 228–9

Austen, Jane, 116; Emma, 185; Sense and Sensibility, 192

Axel, Richard, 89

Babbage, Charles: and Mary Somerville, 205; and Ada Byron, 208–9; ‘Lectures on Astronomy’, 39

Backscheider, Paula: Reflections on Biography, 54

Bailey, Benjamin, 234

Baillie, Joanna, 209

Ball, Admiral Sir Alexander John, 10

balloons: development, 28, 32, 97–8; romance and appeal of, 97–100; Coleridge’s flight, 99–105

Banks, Sir Joseph, 23, 29–30, 35, 37, 114

Barbauld, Anna, 23–4, 183, 210

Barnes, Julian: Flaubert’s Parrot, 59

Barrington, Daines, 267

Bate, Walter Jackson, 227, 236

Baudelaire, Charles, 278

Bayley, John: Iris, 191

Beaumont, Sir George, 298

Becquerel, Antoine César, 206

Beddoes, Thomas, 288

Bell, Andrew, 300

Bentham, Mathilda: Dictionary of Celebrated Women, 184

Bentley, G.E.: Blake Records, 310; A Stranger in Paradise, 310

Berenson, Bernard, 145

Berenson, Mary, 145–7, 150

Bergson, Henri, 93

Big Bang Theory, 302

Biographie Universelle, 167

biography: importance of author’s physical involvement, 5–6; and ‘two-sided notebook’, 6; ‘vertical footnote’ technique, 33–4; as literary form, 47–9, 51, 53–4; as academic subject, 48–51, 54, 58–62, 64, 67–9; Samuel Johnson on, 51–2; proposed canon, 54–7; comparative, 58–9; narrative techniques, 63–6; and authorship, 68; rules for, 69–70; challenges conventions, 191–2; Mary Shelley and, 256–7; human time in, 258–9; Romantic, 281; Victorian revival, 314–16

Biot, Jean-Baptiste, 202, 205–6

Birrell, Francis, 151

Black, Joseph, 28

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 166

Blagden, Charles, 114

Blair, Robert: The Grave, 311, 334

Blake, Catherine (Kate), 311, 318, 329, 334–5

Blake, William: hostility to science, 22; Thomas Lawrence supports, 273; Preface to Milton, 307–8, 332; radical influence, 307–8; death, 310; neglected and misjudged by contemporaries, 310–12; as artist and illustrator, 311; Gilchrist researches and writes on, 312–13, 315–20, 326–35, 337–8; Samuel Palmer on, 316–17; in Felpham, 317, 329, 337; eccentric behaviour, 333–5; ‘Auguries of Innocence’, 24; ‘Jerusalem’ (poem), 307–8, 332; Jerusalem (‘Prophetic Book’), 326, 337; ‘London’, 308–9; ‘A Memorable Fancy’, 332; ‘Notes on Lavater’, 320, 332; Poetic Sketches, 320; Poetical Works (ed. William Rossetti, 1874), 335; ‘Prophetic Books’, 326, 336–7; Proverbs of Hell, 332; ‘Rossetti Notebook’, 309; Songs of Innocence and Experience, 273, 308, 310–11; ‘The Tyger’, 308–11; Visions of the Daughters of Albion, 327; The Wise and Foolish Virgins, 273–4

Blanchard, Jean-Pierre, 23, 32, 43, 97

Blessington, Margaret, Countess of, 276–7

Blood, Fanny, 63, 176, 187

Bloom, Harold, 310

Blücher, Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von, 275

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 9, 30

Bogue, David, 314

Bolívar, Simón, 231

Book of Job: illustrated by Blake, 311, 316, 325

Boswell, James: as biographer, 47; and Zélide (Isabelle de Tuylle), 140, 142, 144, 147; visits Rousseau, 164; Life of Johnson, 52, 54–5, 57, 65–6

Bougainville, Antoine de, 29

Boyle, Robert, 114, 125

brain (human), 79–80, 89–91

Brawne, Fanny: letters to Keats, 221; Andrew Motion invokes, 225; love affair with Keats, 226–7, 233–5; on Keats’s power to attract, 228; Keats’s letters to, 236; moves to Hampstead Heath, 239; flirts with Charles Brown, 240; later marriage, 240; mourns Keats, 240

Brent, Charlotte, 102, 107

Brewster, Sir David, 201–2, 311; Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 58

Bright Star (Jane Campion; film), 226

Bristol Pneumatic Institute, 15

British Association for the Advancement of Science, 23

Bronowski, Jacob, 309

Brontë, Charlotte, 55, 57; Villette, 57

Brontë sisters, 116

Brown, Carlino (Charles’s son), 241

Brown, Charles Armitage: friendship with Keats, 224, 226–7, 230–1, 237–9; character and background, 237; fails to write Keats’s biography, 240; later life, 240; Narensky (comic opera), 237; Otho the Great (play, with Keats), 239

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 60, 167, 212

Browning, Robert, 212, 331

Bruder, Helen, 310

Buchan, John: The Thirty-Nine Steps, 90

Buck, Linda, 89

Buckley, Arabella, 208

Burke, Edmund: ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’, 24

Burney, Fanny, 116, 149, 157, 185, 266; The Wanderer, 185

Burns, Robert, 232

Burrows, Johnnie (Anne Gilchrist’s brother), 322

Butts, Thomas, 328, 330–1, 334

Byatt, A.S.: Possession, 59

Byerley, Katharine, 296

Byron, Anne Isabelle, Lady, 116, 208

Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron: and science, 23, 27, 36; on Newton’s apple, 26–7; biographies of, 57; Thomas Moore on, 57; view of Mme de Staël, 155, 165–6; posthumous fame, 222; death at Missolonghi, 246; and Shelley’s death, 248; sailing with Shelley, 250; effect on Shelley, 253; finances Leigh Hunt, 254; in Mary Shelley’s writings, 256; style, 269; meets Lady Blessington, 277; and Lawrence portrait of Charles Lambton, 278; on Coleridge, 286; Don Juan, 36; ‘Sonnet to Lake Leman’, 166; ‘Vision of Judgement’, 254

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 253

Calne, Wiltshire, 11

Campbell, Clarissa: Wollstonecraft’s Daughters, 192

Campion, Jane, 226–7

Canning, George: Lawrence portrait of, 276; ‘The Vision of Liberty’ (satirical poem), 184

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 315

Carlyle, Thomas: and Gilchrist, 314–15, 321, 335; praises Gilchrist’s Blake, 331; Anne Gilchrist plans life of, 338; Life of Frederick the Great, 315

Caro, Robert: Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, 64–5

Caroline, Queen of George IV, 272

Cavalier, Jean, 76

Cavendish, Sir Charles, 118, 120–1

Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (née Lucas): burial in Westminster Abbey, 13, 216; background, 116–17; soubriquet (‘Mad Madge’), 116, 132; marriage, 117–20; character, 118, 131; letters, 118–20; dress, 120–1, 125–6, 132; in Holland, 121; attends Royal Society meetings, 125–7; satirises Royal Society, 127–8, 130; on Nature, 129–30; notoriety, 207; opposes vivisection, 210; The Blazing World, 127–9; ‘The Hunting of the Hare’, 129–30; The Life of William Cavendish, 131; Observations on Experimental Philosophy, 131; Philosophical Letters, 129; Playes, 129; Poems and Fancies, 121–5, 127, 129; A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life, 131

Cévennes, France, 6–7, 73–5

Chalmers, Alexander, 185

Chantrey, Sir Francis, 207–8, 216

Charles, Archduke of Austria, 275

Charles, Jacques-Alexandre, 97

Charlotte, Queen of George III, 268

Charlotte Dundas (steamship), 28

Charrière, Charles de, 141, 144, 147, 149

Charrière, Isabelle de see Tuyll, Isabelle de

Chastenay, Madame de, 160

chemistry, 29

Chevalier, Tracy, 310

Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (anthology), 308

chronometer, 27

Civil War (English), 117

Clapton, Eric, 167

Clarke, Charles Cowden, 224

Clarke, Marisse, 77–8; Wash Day and Bath Night (dissertation), 78

Clerk Maxwell, James, 201, 206

Coburn, Kathleen, 285

Coleridge, Hartley, 8, 298

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: biography, 7; notebooks, 8, 297; travels, 9–10, 13, 30; in Malta, 10, 293; moon- and sun-worship, 10; opium addiction, 11, 14, 102, 283, 289, 293, 296; friendship with Davy, 13, 15–16, 21, 290, 293–4, 303; infatuation with Sara Hutchinson, 13–15; experiments with Humphry Davy, 15–16; and science, 21, 23–4, 105, 290, 303; on biography, 52; on memory, Associationism and forgetfulness, 81–4, 86, 92–3; balloon flight, 99–107; Poe admires, 100–1; Allston portrait (1814), 102–3; quarrel with Wordsworth, 103; and Mary Robinson, 193; Keats meets, 225, 230; lectures at Royal Institution, 281–5, 294–7, 300–4; walking, 281; poetic principles, 286–7; portrait (1799), 286; studies in Germany, 287–8; attends Davy’s Royal Institution lectures, 291–2; on Imagination, 293, 297–300; aesthetic theory, 297–8; on Education, 300–1; career as public lecturer, 302; reads Blake in manuscript, 310; The Ancient Mariner, 9, 100, 286, 301; ‘An Angel Visitant’, 15; Biographia Literaria, 11, 83, 86, 105, 164, 299–300, 302; ‘Dejection: an Ode’, 13; ‘The Eolian Harp’, 295; ‘Frost at Midnight’, 11, 82–3, 286; ‘Kubla Khan’, 8, 12, 15, 93, 99, 103, 226, 286, 289, 293; Lyrical Ballads (with Wordsworth), 190; Notebooks, 82; ‘Religious Musings’, 81–2; Shakespeare Criticism, 302; ‘Sonnet to the River Otter’, 11; The Theory of Life, 302; ‘To a Young Ass’, 286; ‘A Tombless Epitaph’, 12

‘Coleridge Among the Scientists’ (RH; lecture), 21

consciousness (human), 79–80

Constable, John, 106

Constant, Benjamin: relations with Madame de Staël, 141, 156, 161–2, 167; relations with Zélide, 141–4, 146, 151; Geoffrey Scott identifies with, 147; on Mme de Staël’s Corinne, 162; Adolphe, 141, 145, 165; Cahier Rouge, 161

Cook, Captain James, 22, 29, 37

‘Corinna, Corinna’ (blues song), 167

Cornwall, Barry, 234

cosmology: developments, 28, 41–2; Shelley on, 39; see also Herschel, William

Cottle, Joseph, 286

Courier (newspaper), 246

Cox, Jane, 234

Creation myth, 43

Creationism, 215

Crick, Francis: The Astonishing Hypothesis, 79

Croker, Rosamund, 276

Cromek, Robert Hartley, 334

Cunningham, Alan: Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, 311

Curie, Marie, 114

Cusk, Rachel: Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation, 192

Cutting, Lady Sybil (later Scott), 145–7

Cuvier, Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, Baron, 22

Dalton, John, 29

Dante Alighieri: Inferno, 311

Darwin, Charles, 21–2, 31, 214–15, 303; On the Origin of Species, 200, 323

Darwin, Erasmus, 23, 28, 42, 288, 302

Davy, Sir Humphry: relations with Coleridge, 13, 15–16, 21, 294, 303; as scientist, 23; and early anaesthesia, 29, 32, 289; Mayhew on, 33; as subject of biography, 35; influence on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 43; and Associationism, 84; painted by Thomas Lawrence, 267; status and fame, 267; lectures and demonstrates at Royal Institution, 281, 291–2, 297; invites Coleridge to lecture, 283, 285, 293, 295, 302–4; influenced by German Romantic science, 288; poetry, 290, 295; delivers Second Bakerian Lecture at Royal Society, 293–4; writes to Coleridge on imagination, 293; calorific experiments, 298; Salmonia, or Days of Fly-Fishing, 84

Dawkins, Richard, 39; Unweaving the Rainbow, 225

Defoe, Daniel: on Jack Sheppard, 52; fictional women, 186

de Morgan, August, 116

Denman, Maria, 317

De Quincey, Thomas, 296–7

Descartes, René, 121

Devonshire, Georgiana Duchess of, 266, 272

Dickens, Charles: and Ellen Ternan, 58; The Mudfog Papers, 199

Digby, Sir Kenelm, 68, 120

Domenichino: Cumaean Sybil (painting), 159

Don Juan (boat), 246, 250–3, 257

Dowden, Edward: life of Shelley, 59

Dr Johnson & Mr Savage (RH), 60

dreams, 80

Dryden, John, 50

Dylan, Bob, 167

East Anglia, University of, 61

Eclectic Review, 313

Edel, Leon: Writing Lives: Principia Biographica, 54

Edgeworth, Maria, 205; Belinda, 185

Edinburgh Review, 202, 205

education: Coleridge on, 300–1

Eliot, George, 116, 162, 192; The Mill on the Floss, 203–4

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 163

Endeavour, HMS, 30

Erdmann, David: Prophet Against Empire, 310

Etty, William, 313–14, 318

European Magazine, 180

Evans, Mary Ann see Eliot, George

Evelyn, John, 114, 126

evolution theory: Mary Somerville accepts, 214–15; Coleridge on, 302

exploration (geographic), 29–30

Fairfax, Vice-Admiral William, 203

Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air (RH), 99

Faraday, Michael, 23, 201, 205, 207

Farington, Joseph, 270, 273

Farren, Elizabeth, 269

Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 102

Felpham, Sussex, 317, 329, 337

Fenwick, Elizabeth, 173–4

Ferry, Georgina, 115

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 164

Finch, Francis Oliver, 317

fish: and memory, 84

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 225

Flaxman, John, 318, 331, 335

Footsteps (RH), 5–6

Ford, E. Onslow, 248

forgetting, 73, 75, 80, 85–6, 91–3

Forster, Johann and Georg, 29

Forster, John: life of Dickens, 58; popular biographies, 318; Oliver Goldsmith, 314

Fournier, Louis: The Cremation of Shelley (painting), 248

Frankenstein, Victor (fictional figure), 21–2

Franklin, Sir John, 30, 206

French Revolution: Thomas Lawrence and, 269

Friend, The (journal), 52, 303

Froude, James Anthony: Life of Thomas Carlyle, 56, 337

Fry, Elizabeth, 192

Frye, Northrop: Fearful Symmetry, 308, 310

Fuller, Margaret, 163, 192

Funnell, Peter, 265

Fuseli, Henry, 176, 178–9, 188, 335

Gardon, river (France; les Gardons), 73–4, 76–7

Gaskell, Elizabeth, 318; Charlotte Brontë, 55, 57, 315

Gassendi, Pierre, 120, 122

Gautier, Théophile, 277

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis, 205–6

Gélieu, Isabelle de, 149

General Biographical Dictionary, The, 185

Genesis, Book of, 43

Gentleman’s Magazine, 171

George III, King, 267

George IV, King (earlier Prince Regent), 274–5

Germany: intellectual influence on Coleridge, 287–8

Gigante, Denise: The Keats Brothers, 228

Gilchrist, Alexander: researches and writes on Blake, 310, 312–18, 320, 326, 328, 330–1, 334–5, 339; ill health, 319; death, 321; quality of writing, 332–3; Life of Blake, 318, 330

Gilchrist, Anne (née Burrows; Alexander’s wife): marriage and children, 314, 319; walks with Alexander, 315; collects Blake watercolours, 317; acts as Alexander’s amanuensis, 319–20; background and career, 321–3; and Alexander’s death, 323–4; writings, 323, 338; completes and edits Alexander’s life of Blake, 324–31, 334, 336–9; in America writing on Whitman, 336; revises Blake biography, 336; cancer and death, 338; death of daughter Beatrice, 338; writes Blake entry for Dictionary of National Biography, 338; ‘Lost in the Woods’ (children’s story), 322

Gilchrist, Beatrice (Alexander’s daughter), 320–1; death, 338

Gillray, James, 182

Ginsberg, Allen, 308

Gittings, Robert, 227, 232–4, 236–7

Godet, Philippe: Madame de Charrière et ses Amis, 142–3, 146, 151

Godwin, William: writes life of Mary Wollstonecraft, 52, 55, 62–4, 175–82, 186–91; devastated by Mary’s death, 173; views and beliefs, 173; edits Mary’s Posthumous Works, 175, 182; attacked and criticised, 182–4, 186; first meets Mary, 188; biography of, 194; death, 195; Thomas Lawrence drawing of, 268–9; criticises Humphry Davy’s scientific work, 290–1; Caleb Williams, 173; An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 173, 176; Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, 52, 55, 62–4, 179–80, 183, 186, 190, 196

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 30, 253; Faust, 9, 255; The Sorrows of Young Werther, 53, 178, 187

Gooden, Angelica, 167

Gordon, Lyndall, 62

Gosse, Sir Edmund: Father and Son, 59

Göttingen, Germany, 9

Graham, Mrs (earth scientist), 206

Graham, Sheilah: College of One, 225

Grahame, Kenneth: The Wind in the Willows, 89

gravity, 200

Gray, Francine du Plessix, 167

Greek War of Independence, 254

Green, Charles, 100, 102

Green, Joseph Henry, 303

Greenfield, Susan: The Human Brain: A Guided Tour, 89, 91, 92

Greer, Germaine, 310; The Boy, 248

Greig, Samuel, 204

Greig, Woronzow (Mary Somerville’s son), 204–5, 210, 213

Greta Hall, Keswick, 13–14

Guiccioli, Countess Teresa, 163, 277

Gunn, Thom: ‘Keats at Highgate’, 225

Halley, Edmund, 114

Hambling, Maggi, 115

Hamilton, Emma, Lady, 53

Hamilton, Ian: Keepers of the Flame, 59

Hamilton, Mary, 267–8

Hardy, Henriette l’, 149

Hardy, Thomas: Two on a Tower, 34

Harrison, Thomas, 27

Hartley, David: Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty and His Expectations, 79–82, 89, 91, 93

Harvey, William, 128

Hawkins, Frances, 276

Haydn, Joseph, 38, 41–2; The Creation (oratorio), 40–1, 43

Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 231, 264

Hayley, William, 329, 336

Hays, Mary, 172, 183–4; Dictionary of Female Biography, 184

Hazlitt, William: on Coleridge’s ballooning, 101; on Godwin, 186; and Keats, 231; writing for Leigh Hunt, 254; on Lawrence’s portrait of Prince Regent, 275; ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’, 255; The Spirit of the Age, 57

Héger, Constantin, 57

Heine, Heinrich, 159

Hemans, Felicia, 163

Henrietta-Maria, Queen of Charles I, 117, 120–1

Henry, Joseph, 202, 206

Hermenches, Chevalier Constant d’: Zélide’s correspondence with, 135–9, 143; Geoffrey Scott identifies with, 147

Herold, J. Christopher: Mistress to an Age, 160–1

Herschel, Caroline: and science, 16, 23, 35, 37–8, 41–2; astronomical discoveries, 113, 210; scientific writings, 114–15; made Honorary Fellow of Royal Astronomical Society, 115

Herschel, Sir John, 211; A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, 29

Herschel, William: cosmological studies and discoveries, 23, 28, 32, 35, 37–43; and sister Caroline, 114; letter to Whewell on need for science books, 199; and Mary Somerville, 205–7

Historical Magazine, 180

Hitchcock, Alfred, 90

Hitler, Adolf, 57

Hobbes, Thomas, 79, 120

Hodgkin, Dorothy, 115

Hogg, Thomas Jefferson: life of Shelley, 59

Holcroft, Thomas, 173, 268–9

Holmes, Richard: in France, 6–7, 73–6; lectures at Royal Society, 35; teaches biographical studies, 48–9, 61–9; goes ballooning, 97–8; lectures at Harvard, 103; in Rome, 221; on Shelley’s drowning, 245; lectures on Romantic lecturing, 281

Holroyd, Michael, 47, 56

Hooke, Robert, 114, 125; Micrographia, 128

Hoppner, John, 274

Horace (Horatius Flaccus), 48

Howard, Luke: On the Moderation of Clouds, 106

Hugues, M. (farmer), 65

Humboldt, Alexander von, 30, 202, 206, 210; Cosmos, 210; Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, 30–1

Hume, David: Treatise on Human Nature, 79

Hunt, James Leigh, 224, 231, 240, 251, 254, 258

Hutchinson, Sara (‘Asra’): in Coleridge’s Notebook, 8, 82; Coleridge’s love for, 13–15, 103; Coleridge’s poem to, 13

Hutton, James, 43

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 115

Huygens, Constantijn, 121

Hypatia of Alexandria, 113

imagination: Coleridge and, 293, 297–300

Imlay, Fanny (Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter), 175, 188

Imlay, Gilbert, 63, 175–6, 178, 181, 188, 193

Jacobs, Diane, 62

Jasinski, Béatrice, 158

Jefferson, Thomas, 156

Jeffries, John, 43, 97

Jerningham, Edward, 284, 296–7

Job see Book of Job

Johnson, Joseph, 63, 174–5, 178–9, 181, 183–4, 188

Johnson, Robert, 167

Johnson, Samuel: Boswell’s life of, 52; biographical writings, 57; lives of, 57; on stage illusion, 298; Life of Mr. Richard Savage, 52, 65; Lives of the Poets, 55; ‘On Biography’, 51

Jones, Isabella, 234–5

Jones, Louisa, 175

Juniper Hall, Surrey, 157

Kant, Immanuel, 164

Keats, Frances (John’s mother), 227

Keats, George (John’s brother), 228–30

Keats, John: and science, 23, 38, 39; death in Rome, 221–2, 246; posthumous resonance and influence, 222–6, 241; imaginative powers, 223–4; friendship with Charles Brown, 224, 226–7, 230–1, 237–9; meets Coleridge, 225, 230; love affair with Fanny Brawne, 226–7, 233–5; biographies, 227–30, 237, 241; on brother George, 229; black eye playing cricket, 230; career, 231; circle of friends, 231; tour of Scottish Highlands, 231–2; and brother Tom’s death, 232; tuberculosis, 233, 239; and women, 233–5; letters to Fanny Brawne, 236; described by Charles Brown, 238; on ‘Negative Capability’, 299; ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, 236, 229; ‘Bright Star’, 234, 235; ‘The Day is Gone’, 235; Endymion, 236, 231; ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, 226, 234, 237; ‘The Eve of St Mark’, 234; Hyperion, 230, 232, 236; ‘The Jealousies, or the Cap and Bells’, 233; Lamia, 235; ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, 224; ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, 39–40; Otho the Great (play, with Brown), 239; Poems (1817), 231; ‘To Autumn’, 223, 226; ‘To Psyche’, 230

Keats, Tom (John’s brother), 232, 234, 238–9

Kemble, Fanny, 272

Kingsborough family, 179, 184

Kipling, Rudyard: Something of Myself, 89; ‘Wireless’ (story), 225

‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ (RH; lecture), 103

Korsakoff’s syndrome, 91

Kuhn, Thomas, 208

Lamb, Charles, 231, 310

Lamb, Mary, 192, 338

Lambton, Charles William, 264, 277

Lamorisse, Albert, 98

Lancaster, Joseph, 285, 300–1

Landor, Walter Savage, 240

Laplace, Pierre-Simon, Marquis de, 22, 28, 42–3; Méchanique Céleste (trans. by Mary Somerville as The Mechanism of the Heavens), 205; Exposition du Système du Monde, 42

Lardner, Dionysus, 208

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 22

Lawrence, Sir Thomas: exhibition (National Gallery 2010), 263; reputation, 263–5, 277–8; background and career, 265–7; style, 267–70, 275; modest lifestyle and character, 270–1; romantic attachments, 272–3; finances and generosity, 273; as official court painter, 274–5; elected President of Royal Academy, 275; knighted, 275; official portraits of record, 276–8; exhibits in Paris, 277; portraits of children, 277; death, 278; Charles William Lambton (The Red Boy; painting), 264, 277–8; Laura Anne and Emily Calmady (painting), 277; ‘On Being Left Alone after Dinner’ (poem), 271; Satan as a Fallen Angel (drawing), 272; Satan Summoning his Legions (abandoned painting), 271

Lawrence, William, 23

Leavis, F.R., 278

Lee, Hermione: Body Parts, 245; Virginia Woolf, 65–6

Leigh, Mike, 216

Lenclos, Ninon de (Anne de Lenclos), 138, 149

Leonardo da Vinci: Codex Atlanticus, 92

Lewes, G.H.: Goethe, 315

Lexell, Anders Johan, 40

Liberal, The (journal), 254–5

Linnell, John, 317, 327–8, 331, 335

Lovelace, Augusta Ada, Countess (née Byron), 116, 208–9; Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq, 209

Lucas, Charles, 117

Lunar Society, 42

Lyell, Sir Charles, 23, 31, 115

McEwan, Ian: Enduring Love, 225–6

Macmillan (publishers): and Gilchrist’s life of Blake, 318–21, 324, 327, 334, 336

Malkin, Benjamin Heath, 331

Malta, 10, 293

Mariano, Nicky, 145–6

Martin, Jonathan, 312

Martineau, Harriet, 116; Autobiography, 186

Marx, Groucho, 91

Maskelyne, Nevil, 113

Masters, Alexander, 47; Stuart: A Life Backwards, 65

Maugham, William Somerset, 47

Maurois, André: Ariel, 151; Mape: The World of Illusion, 272

Mayhew, Henry: The Wonders of Science, 33

Meade, Lady Selina, 276

Méchain, Pierre, 113

Mechanics’ Magazine, 202

memory: goddess of (Mnemosyne), 73; RH’s, 73, 75; academic enquiry into, 77; Hartley on association and, 79–82; Coleridge on, 81–2; and Associationism, 83–4; and human brain, 90–1; long-term, 92

memory boxes, 77–8, 82

Meredith, George, 325

Merivel, Sir Robert, 126, 343

Mersenne, Martin, 120

Messier, Charles, 40

Metternich, Prince Clemens Lothar Wenzel, 275

Mill, John Stuart: opposes vivisection, 210; and Shelley, 256; The Subjection of Women, 192

Millais, John Everett: The Eve of St Agnes (painting), 24–5

Miller, Lucasta: The Brontë Myth, 59

Milton, John: Paradise Lost, 40, 53, 272, 302

Mitchell, Joni, 167

Mitchell, Maria, 210–13

Mitford, Nancy, 57

Monarchon, Henriette, 149

Monthly Magazine, 181, 311

Monthly Mirror (magazine), 172

Moore, Thomas, 57

Morgan, Charles and Mary, 102

Mortimer, Raymond, 151

Motion, Andrew: poetry, 227; in Rome, 237; The Invention of Dr Cake, 225, 227, 233–4, 236; Wainewright the Poisoner, 60

Mountstuart, Lord, 270

Mr Turner (Mike Leigh; film), 216

Murdoch, Iris, 191

Murray, John (publisher), 164, 199–200, 205, 208, 213

Nadar, Félix, 99

Napoleon I (Bonaparte), Emperor of the French, 57, 155, 157, 164

nature: in German thought, 287, 294

Necker, Jacques, 159

Nelson, Admiral Horatio, Viscount, 53

Nelson, Willie, 167

New York Sun (newspaper), 99–100

Newcastle, Margaret, Duchess of see Cavendish, Margaret

Newcastle, William Cavendish, 1st Duke (earlier Marquis) of, 117–20, 131

Newton, Sir Isaac, 21–2, 24–7, 58, 104, 114, 224, 309

Nicolson, Harold: on Scott’s life of Zélide, 151; The Development of English Biography, 54; Some People, 151

Nicolson, Nigel: Portrait of a Marriage, 191

nitrous oxide (‘laughing gas’), 15, 29, 288

Norman, Sylva: The Flight of the Skylark, 59

North, Roger, 50

North, Thomas, 50

O’Donohue, Abigail (Charles Brown’s wife), 140

Oken, Lorenz, 287

Opie, Amelia (née Alderson), 149, 185; Adeline Mowbray, 185

Opie, John, 175, 185

Origo, Iris: Images and Shadows, 146

Osborne, Dorothy, 126

Ottery St Mary, Devon, 11–12

Owen, Robert, 192

Paine, Thomas, 63–4, 188

Palmer, Samuel, 316–17, 331, 335–6

Paolozzi, Eduardo: statue of Blake’s Newton, 22, 309

Papendieck, Charlotte, 268, 272

Paris: siege (1870–71), 98–9; Thomas Lawrence exhibits in, 277

Park, Mungo, 23, 30, 43; Travels in the Interior of Africa, 30

Parkinson’s disease, 91

Pascal, Blaise, 79

Pasquier, Suzette du, 150

Paul, Kegan, 179

Peacock, Thomas Love, 59

Peel, Sir Robert, 276

Penfield, Wilder, 90

Pepys, Samuel, 114, 125, 127, 129

Peyrat, Napoléon: Pasteurs du Désert, 76

Phillips, Thomas, 265

Piano, The (Jane Campion; film), 226

Pius VII, Pope, 275

Plath, Sylvia, 17

Playfair, William, 204

Plumly, Stanley: Posthumous Keats, 228

Plutarch, 61; Life of Alexander, 49–50

Pneumatic Institute, Clifton, 288

Poe, Edgar Allan: on Coleridge’s balloon flight, 99–100, 102–7; Eureka, 105; Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 101, 106

Pointon, Marcia, 265

Polwhele, Richard: ‘The Unsexed Females’ (poem), 182–3

Poole, Tom, 283

Priestley, Joseph, 23, 80–1, 288; History of Electricity, 288

Proust, Marcel: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, 88–9, 93

‘Public Characters’ (publisher’s series), 194

Quarterly Review, 202

Red Balloon, The (Albert Lamorisse; film), 98

Reid, Thomas, 81

Revue Britannique, La, 311

Reynolds, John, 231

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 263–4, 266

Richmond, George, 317, 335

Ritter, Johann Wilhelm, 287

Roberts, Captain, 251–2

Robinson, Henry Crabb, 284, 301, 318, 331; Reminiscences, 335; ‘William Blake: Artist, Poet and Religious Dreamer’, 318

Robinson, Mary (‘Perdita’), 183; Letter to the Women of England, 193–4

Roe, Nicholas: John Keats: A New Life, 230–1, 233–4, 236–7

Rogers, Samuel, 265

Roget, Peter, 288

Rolland, M. (farmer), 75

Romanticism: and science, 21–2, 24, 27, 36, 39; and biographical writings, 52–3

Rome: Keats’s death in, 221–2, 237

Roscoe, William, 180

Rossetti, Christina, 325, 331

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel: buys Blake manuscripts, 312, 322; Gilchrist meets, 318; and Gilchrist’s life of Blake, 325; wife’s death, 325

Rossetti, William Michael, 312, 319, 325, 327–8, 335

Roszak, Theodore: The Making of a Counter Culture, 308

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 164, 277; Confessions, 322

Royal Academy, London: Lawrence exhibits at, 268

Royal Astronomical Society, London, 115

Royal Institution, London: lectures, 281–5, 290–5, 300–4

Royal Society of London: RH presents The Age of Wonder to, 35–6; celebrates 350th anniversary (2010), 113–14; and role of women in science, 114, 116; Margaret Cavendish attends meetings, 125–7; Margaret Cavendish satirises, 127–8, 131; Mary Somerville disbarred from Fellowship, 207; Davy lectures at, 293–4; Philosophical Transactions, 42, 114

Rubens, Peter-Paul, 298

Sackville-West, Vita, 59, 146–7, 151, 191

Sadler, James, 103–5, 107

Sage, Laetitia, 23

St Clair, William, 62

Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin, 142–3, 160

Salomon, Johann Peter, 40

Sandoz-Rollin, Caroline de, 150

Savage, William, 282

Schelling, Friedrich: Naturphilosophie, 9, 287

Schiff, Stacy, 57

Schuchard, Marsha: Why Mrs Blake Cried, 310

science: and literature, 16–17, 21–2; women in, 16, 23, 38, 114–16; Coleridge and, 21–2, 105; and technological development, 27–8; discoveries, 28–9; biographies, 32–3, 43–4; writings, 199; divisions and specialisms, 201–2

Scott, Geoffrey: biography of Isabelle de Tuyll (The Portrait of Zélide), 142–51

Scott, Sir Walter: unaware of Blake, 311

Sedgwick, Adam, 207

Severn, Joseph, 221, 224, 231, 240

Shakespeare, William: Hamlet, 11; Romeo and Juliet, 163; Venus and Adonis, 299

Shelley, Mary (née Godwin): and science, 16, 23, 38–9; biographies of, 59; birth, 63; Mme de Staël’s influence on, 167; infancy, 175; elopes with Shelley, 195; on mother (Mary Wollstonecraft), 195–6; posthumous fame, 222; and Shelley’s death, 247–8; on Shelley’s passion for boating, 250; and Shelley’s final sailing trip, 251–2; writing for Leigh Hunt, 254; counterfactual biographies, 256–7; life after Shelley’s death, 256–8; ‘The Bride of Modern Italy’, 254; Falkner, 257; The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, 257; Frankenstein, 43, 53, 195, 256; The Last Man, 195, 256; Lodore, 257; ‘Note to the Poems of 1822’, 248

Shelley, Percy Bysshe: biography by RH, 5; and science, 23; boating on Lake Geneva with Byron, 166; death by drowning, 245–50, 252–3; tomb and monuments, 248; sailing experience, 250–1; radicalism and beliefs, 253–6; translating, 253–4; unfulfilled prospects, 255–7; on human time, 258; Leavis criticises, 278; Naturism, 333; ‘Adonais’, 222, 229; ‘Alastor’, 249; Hellas, 195; The Indian Enchantress, 253; ‘Odes to Liberty’, 254; ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’, 254; Queen Mab, 38, 258; The Revolt of Islam, 195; The Triumph of Life, 249, 253; ‘A Vision of the Sea’, 249

Shelley, Percy Florence, 255

Shelley, Sir Timothy, 255

Sheppard, Jack, 52

Shortland, Michael and Richard Yeo (eds): Telling Lives in Science, 33

Siddal, Elizabeth (D.G. Rossetti’s wife), 325

Siddons, Sarah, 266, 272

Sidetracks (RH), 5

Sismondi, Jean Charles Léonard de, 161

Skeys, Hugh, 176–7

smell: and association, 88–9

Smiles, Samuel: Self-Help, 315

Smith, Charlotte, 183

Snow, C.P.: ‘The Two Cultures’, 21, 43

Somerville, Martha (Mary’s daughter), 205–6, 209, 213, 215–16

Somerville, Mary: and science, 16, 23; background, 203–4; in France, 205; translates Laplace, 205; Chantrey bust, 207–8, 216; fame and recognition, 207, 216; invited to Cambridge, 207; and Ada Byron (Lovelace), 208; character and manner, 208; moves to Italy, 209–10, 213; unsettled private life, 209; Maria Mitchell meets and admires, 211–13; beliefs, 214–15; in old age, 215–16; death and burial, 216; Oxford college named for, 216; on evolution and teleology, 303; Molecular and Microscopic Science, 213–14; On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 29, 199–202, 205–6; later editions, 208, 210; Personal Recollections, 215; Physical Geography, 210, 212, 215

Somerville, Mary, Jr (Mary’s daughter), 205–6, 213

Somerville, William, 204–6, 209, 211; death, 213–14

Southey, Robert: life of Nelson, 53; letter from Coleridge on association, 92; on Godwin’s Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft, 180; on Coleridge’s Royal Institution lectures, 300–1; on Blake, 310

Spenser, Edmund, 223

Spurling, Hilary, 47, 57

Staël, Albertine de, 155, 157

Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Baronne de (née Necker): and Benjamin Constant, 141, 156, 161–2, 167; and Zélide, 144, 147–8, 151; background, 155–6; illegitimate child, 155, 157; lifestyle, 157; friendships and network, 158; biographies of, 159–60; fondness for father, 159–60; turban, 159–60; effect on Byron, 165–6; reputation and influence, 166–8; Corinne, 141, 155, 159, 162–3, 167; Correspondence Générale 1788–1809, 158; Delphine, 158, 161; On the Character of Monsieur Necker and his Private Life, 160; On Germany, 155, 163–5, 167; Reflections on Suicide, 158

Stanley, Virginia, 68

Steffens, Henrik, 287

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 277

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 6–8; Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 10, 76

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 162

Strachey, Lytton, 69, 150; Eminent Victorians, 47, 143; Queen Victoria, 151

Stukeley, William, 24–5, 224

Sunstein, Emily, 62

Swift, Jonathan, 128

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 309, 319, 325; William Blake: A Critical Essay, 335–7

Tatham, Frederick, 317, 328, 335

Taylor, Harriet, 192

Taylor, John, 229, 234–5

Ternan, Ellen, 58

Thackeray, William Makepeace: Vanity Fair, 278

Thirty-Nine Steps, The (Alfred Hitchcock; film), 90

Thomas, Edward: ‘Old Man’ (poem), 87–8

Thompson, E.P., 310

Thurman, Judith, 57

Ticknor, George, 164

Tocqueville, Alexis de: Democracy in America, 164

Todd, Janet, 62

Tomalin, Claire, 47, 57, 58, 62; The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, 190

Trelawny, Edward John: and Charles Brown, 240; and Shelley’s cremation, 245, 247–8; funerary inscription for Shelley, 247; on Shelley’s sailing experience, 250; and Shelley’s drowning, 252; Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, 247

Turner, J.M.W., 210

Tuyll, Ditie de, 136

Tuyll, Isabelle de (‘Belle de Zuylen’; ‘Zélide’): appearance and character, 135–6; correspondence with Hermenches, 135–9, 143; marriage to Charrière, 135, 140–1, 144; life’s aims, 136–8; writings, 137, 142, 149; correspondence with Boswell, 140, 144, 148; relations with Benjamin Constant, 141, 143–4, 146, 148, 161; Geoffrey Scott writes biography, 142–52; clandestine affair, 149; women friends, 149–50; Caliste, 139, 142, 149; Letters from Mistress Henley published by her Friend, 141; Letters written from Neufchâtel, 141; Three Women, 139, 149

Upton, Hon. Mrs, 272

Uranus, 32, 35, 39–40

Vaughan, William, 278

Verne, Jules: Cinq Semaines en Ballon, 98

Victoria, Queen, 114

Vivian, Charles, 252

Voltaire, François Marie Arouet: Zélide reads, 136–7; and Hermenches, 139; Contes Philosophiques, 151; Letters on the English Nation, 25

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 31, 214, 303

Wallace, William, 204

Walpole, Horace, 182

Walpurgisnacht, 9

Walter Scott Publishing Company (London and Boston), 192

Ward, Aileen, 227

Waterhouse, John William: La Belle Dame Sans Merci (painting), 225

Waterton, Charles, 30

Watt, James, 28

Wedgwood family, 183

Weekes, Horatio, 248

Weingarten, Renée, 161, 167

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of, 276

Wernicke’s aphasia, 91

West, Shearer: Portraiture, 264

Westall, Richard, 269

Westfall, Richard: Never at Rest (The Life of Isaac Newton), 58

Westminster Review, 256

Wharton, Edith, 145, 147, 150–1

Whewell, William, 199, 201–2, 207, 211–12, 214

White, Newman Ivey: life of Shelley, 59

Whitman, Walt, 336–7

Wilberforce, William, 276

Williams, Edward, 250–3

Williams, Helen Maria, 183

Williams, Jane: and Shelley’s death, 247, 252; Shelley addresses verses to, 253

Wilson, Frances, 47

Wilson, Mona, 309

Wolff, Herman St John, 273

Wolff, Isabella, 272–3, 275

Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth (Mary’s sister), 177

Wollstonecraft, Everina (Mary’s sister), 173, 177

Wollstonecraft, Mary (later Godwin): Godwin’s life of, 52, 55, 62–4, 171, 175–82, 186–91; biographies of, 57; and Scott’s biography of Zélide, 149; suicide attempts, 158, 176, 189; shocks by asking ‘men’s questions’, 159; reputation and influence, 171–2, 182–5, 190, 192, 195; death in childbirth, 172–3, 190; illegitimate child by Imlay, 175–6, 188; religious beliefs, 187; inspires romantic novels and writings, 192–4; Mary Shelley on, 195–6; Elements of Morality for the Use of Children (trans. from German), 172; Historical and Moral View, 172; Letters to Imlay (unpublished), 178–9, 181; Letters Written from Scandinavia, 164, 172; Maria, or The Wrongs of Women (unfinished), 174–5; Posthumous Works (ed. Godwin), 175, 178, 195; The Rights of Man, 172; Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, 172; Vindication of the Rights of Women, 172, 174, 186, 188, 190, 193

Woman Reading William Blake (collection), 310

women: and science, 16, 23, 38, 114–16; biographies of, 57; excluded from membership of scientific societies, 114; education, 194

Wood, Anthony à, 48

Woolf, Virginia: and biography, 66–7; on Margaret Cavendish, 132; affair with Vita Sackville-West, 151; essay on Mary Wollstonecraft, 192; Flush, 60; Orlando, 56, 59, 67

Wordsworth, Dorothy: relations with Coleridge, 8, 13; Coleridge describes, 291

Wordsworth, Mary (née Hutchinson), 13

Wordsworth, William: relations with Coleridge, 8–9, 11, 13; and Humphry Davy, 21; and science, 23, 26; criticises biography, 52; quarrel with Coleridge, 103; reads Blake in manuscript, 310; Anne Gilchrist plans life of, 338; ‘Daffodils’, 299; Lyrical Ballads (with Coleridge), 290; The Prelude, 26

Wren, Sir Christopher, 114

Wroe, Ann: Pilate, 60

Wulf, Andrea: The Invention of Nature, 31

Wylie, Georgiana (George Keats’s wife), 228–30

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven: Lawrence exhibition, 264–5

Yeats, William Butler, 309

Young, Edward: Night Thoughts, 311

Zélide see Tuyll, Isabelle de