A handsome run of three consecutive early volumes from Manchester’s pioneering learned society, containing important Enlightenment papers in medicine, science and philosophy, with fourteen engraved plates and three folding charts.
Bibliographic Details
Author: LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF MANCHESTER; under the presidency of PERCIVAL (Thomas, English physician, medical reformer and founding president of the Society, 1740–1804), with papers by William Falconer, John Haygarth, John Rotheram, Thomas Cooper and others.
Title: Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. Vol. III and Vol. IV, Parts I and II.
Place of Publication: Warrington.
Publisher: Printed for T. Cadell.
Date / Edition: 1790, 1793 and 1796. First editions of these volumes.
Volumes: Three consecutive volumes, comprising Vol. III and Vol. IV, Parts I and II; numbered III, IV and V on the spines.
Collation: Vol. III: xvi, 648, [9, index] pp.; Vol. IV, Part I: xvi, 272 pp.; Vol. IV, Part II: vii, 273–655, [1, errata] pp.
Illustrations: A total of 14 engraved plates and 3 folding charts. The 1790 volume contains five engraved plates, two folding; the 1793 volume contains three folding plates and three folding charts; the 1796 volume contains six engraved plates, one folding.
Binding: Uniform contemporary full polished calf, with red and black spine labels, gilt lettering, volume numbers and decorative gilt motifs.
Provenance: From the Selbourne library, with pencil shelf markings to the front pastedowns.
Size: 8vo; each volume approximately 21.7 × 13.7 cm.
Condition
Very Good to Good overall. An attractive and substantially well-preserved uniform set. A couple of hinges are beginning to weaken slightly, although the bindings remain sound as a whole. Some minor scratches, rubbing and marks to the boards and spines, consistent with age.
Text leaves are generally bright and clean. The plates and folding charts are mostly well preserved, with some offsetting and foxing to several illustrations and to a number of facing text pages. One folding plate shows some discolouration. Usual toning to pastedowns and endpapers from binding glue, together with scattered foxing. The foxing becomes heavier within one gathering of the third volume, as shown in the gallery images.
Please ask if you require a more detailed condition report, or view gallery images closely.
Description
A handsome run of three consecutive early volumes of the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, one of the most important provincial scientific journals of the British Enlightenment. Published between 1790 and 1796, the volumes contain a remarkably broad collection of original papers in medicine, meteorology, chemistry, natural philosophy, mathematics, history and antiquarian study.
The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, popularly known as the Lit. & Phil., was founded in February 1781 by Thomas Percival, Thomas Barnes, Thomas Henry, Thomas Butterworth Bayley and a circle of physicians, manufacturers and intellectuals. It became one of the oldest and most influential learned societies in Britain, and the second-oldest provincial society after the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society.
Manchester was then developing rapidly as a centre of manufacturing, trade and technological experiment. The Society created an important meeting ground for physicians, chemists, engineers, industrialists and natural philosophers, allowing theoretical knowledge to circulate alongside the practical problems of an expanding industrial city. Its published Memoirs carried those discussions to a much wider national and international audience.
The preliminary matter includes the laws of the Society and detailed lists of members and honorary members. These names form an impressive record of late eighteenth-century intellectual life and include such major figures as Thomas Percival, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley and Sir Joseph Banks.
Thomas Percival was central to the Society’s early identity. A distinguished physician and reformer, he wrote extensively on public health, medical conduct and the social responsibilities of doctors. His later work on medical ethics had a lasting influence upon the professional development of medicine in Britain and beyond. Under his leadership, the Manchester Society encouraged an unusually broad and practical approach to scientific enquiry.
The papers in these three volumes span an impressive range of subjects. Contributors include William Falconer, physician and writer on climate and health; John Rotheram, natural philosopher and mathematician; Thomas Cooper, chemist, political thinker and later American academic; and numerous other physicians, experimental scientists and antiquaries.
One of the most engaging papers is John Haygarth’s “Description of a Glory”, which records a striking atmospheric phenomenon observed in the Vale of Clwyd on 13 February 1780. Haygarth writes:
“...I was struck with the peculiar appearance of a white shining cloud, that lay remarkably close to the ground.”
The paper is accompanied by a folding engraved plate illustrating the phenomenon. A “glory” is an optical effect produced when light is scattered backwards through fine droplets of water, frequently appearing as concentric rings around the observer’s shadow when viewed against mist or cloud. Haygarth’s careful account belongs to the early scientific investigation of atmospheric optics and demonstrates the observational precision encouraged by learned societies of the period.
Haygarth was also an important physician and public-health reformer, remembered particularly for his work on the prevention of smallpox and fever. His description of the glory is characteristic of the period’s natural philosophy, when a physician might move readily between medicine, meteorology and the close observation of unusual natural events.
The set contains fourteen engraved plates and three folding charts, several of substantial size. These illustrate scientific observations, instruments, natural phenomena and mathematical or statistical material. Their presence considerably enhances the value of the volumes, since folding illustrations are particularly vulnerable to loss or damage in working scientific books.
The Society’s Memoirs were produced at a time when the boundaries between scientific disciplines remained fluid. Medicine, chemistry, meteorology, mechanics, economics, natural history and philosophy were often treated as related branches of useful knowledge. These volumes therefore offer a vivid picture of Enlightenment enquiry before the increasing specialisation of the nineteenth century.
They also belong to the intellectual world of the early Industrial Revolution. Manchester’s manufacturers and physicians confronted practical questions concerning machinery, urban growth, workers’ health, atmospheric pollution, chemical processes and the organisation of knowledge. The Society provided an institutional setting in which these matters could be investigated, debated and published.
Joseph Priestley’s association with the Society is especially significant. Priestley lived near Birmingham during much of this period and was already internationally renowned for his work in chemistry, electricity and religious philosophy. Erasmus Darwin likewise represented the energetic provincial intellectual culture that connected scientific speculation, medicine, invention and social reform.
Early volumes of the Memoirs are increasingly difficult to obtain in substantial consecutive runs. Individual volumes were often dispersed, rebound or stripped of their folding plates. The present three volumes retain their illustrations and survive in matching contemporary polished calf, giving them considerable shelf presence as well as historical importance.
Together they form an impressive primary source for the development of British provincial science, medicine and intellectual sociability during the Georgian period. They would make a strong addition to a collection devoted to the history of science, learned societies, meteorology, medicine, the Enlightenment or the intellectual origins of industrial Manchester.
Notes
A particularly attractive consecutive run from one of Britain’s pioneering scientific journals, containing papers by leading Enlightenment physicians and thinkers and illustrated with numerous engraved plates and folding charts.
Of special interest is John Haygarth’s illustrated account of a meteorological “glory”, together with the early membership lists recording Thomas Percival, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, Sir Joseph Banks and other major figures in Georgian science.
Particularly desirable for collectors of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Enlightenment science, meteorology, medical history, Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Percival, learned societies and eighteenth-century scientific publishing.