Michael Faraday's Mental Exercises An Artisan

In 1818 Michael Faraday and a handful of other London artisans formed a self-help group with the aim of teaching themselves to write like gentlemen. For a year and a half Faraday's essay-circle met regularly to read aloud and criticise one another's writings. The ‘Mental Exercises' they produced are a record of the life, literary tastes and social and political ideas of Dissenting artisans in Regency London. This book is the first to publish the essays and poems produced by Faraday's circle. The complete corpus of the essay-circle's writings is accompanied by detailed annotations, extracts from key sources and a full-length introduction explaining the biographical, historical and literary context of the group. This edition will be valuable not only for historians of Romantic and Victorian science, but for literary scholars and historians working on early nineteenth-century writing, reading and class issues, and for all readers interested in the development of the mind of a great scientist.

Alice Jenkins is senior lecturer in English at the University of Glasgow and chair of the British Society for Literature and Science. Her prior publications include Space and the “March of Mind”: Literature in the Physical Sciences in Britain, 1815–1850.

Acknowledgements	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction
Faraday and style	p. 1
Organizing the essay-circle	p. 7
Writing the Mental Exercises	p. 18
Reading in the Mental Exercises	p. 29
Note on editorial policy	p. 37
The 'Mental Exercises'
List of Members and Scribes' Rota	p. 39
Members' Agreement	p. 40
On Study	p. 41
On Honour	p. 46
On Argument	p. 49
On Imagination and Judgement	p. 51
Hope	p. 56
On General Character	p. 59
On the Pleasures and Uses of the Imagination	p. 62
On Politeness	p. 68
Agis	p. 74
The Charms of Sleep	p. 75
Friendship & Charity	p. 77
An Ode to the PASS	p. 82
Garreteer's Epistle	p. 88
A Mathematical Love Letter	p. 89
On seeing a Rose in the Possession of a Lady at the SMHPABNASL	p. 92
On Courage	p. 93
Irritus to the Manager	p. 98
Marriage is Honourable in All	p. 99
Friendship	p. 106
On Mind and the Duty of Improving It	p. 107
A word for Page 73	p. 118
On the Early Introduction of Females to Society	p. 118
Memoranda	p. 120
On prematurely Forming Opinion of Characters	p. 121
On the Death of the Princess Charlotte	p. 124
Affectation	p. 124
On Conscious Approbation	p. 128
The Origin of a Critic-A Fable	p. 129
Reflections on Death	p. 132
On Avarice	p. 135
On Tradesmen	p. 136
On Laws	p. 143
On the Changes of the mind	p. 144
On Marriage	p. 147
On Calumny	p. 148
Letter to the Secretary	p. 149
Enigma	p. 151
On Marriage	p. 152
Effeminacy & Luxury	p. 154
A Brother's Letter to Mr. Deeble	p. 156
Junius & Tullia	p. 156
A Ramble to Melincourt	p. 160
On Triflers	p. 162
139th Psalm	p. 166
Infancy	p. 168
At a Village on the Dunchurch Road	p. 170
Contexts
Faraday and Self-Education
from the Correspondence (1812-16)	p. 174
from Observations on the Means of Obtaining Knowledge (1817)	p. 179
from 'Observations on the Inertia of the Mind' (1818)	p. 187
Faraday's indexes to eighteenth-century periodicals	p. 198
from 'Observations on Mental Education' (1854)	p. 200
The Improvement of the Mind
from The Improvement of the Mind (1741)	p. 213
from The Rambler (1751)	p. 217
from The Moral Tendencies of Knowledge (1815)	p. 220
from Self-Cultivation Recommended: Or, Hints to a Youth Leaving School (1817)	p. 222
From The Black Dwarf (1819)	p. 224
from Frankenstein (1818)	p. 226
from Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825)	p. 233
The Pleasures of the Imagination
from The Spectator (1712)	p. 239
from The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)	p. 242
Index	p. 247
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Michael Faraday's Mental Exercises An Artisan Essay-Circle in Regency London

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