What Regency Women Did For Us by Rachel Knowles

Author:Rachel Knowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2017-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

A humble approach

Jane approached the whole project with considerable diffidence. She felt that she was a relative novice and hesitated to publish a work that some might think presumptuous. Perhaps because of this innate modesty, or perhaps a fear that the book’s inadequacies might reflect badly on her husband, Conversations on Chemistry was published anonymously in 1805.

The introduction to the book made it clear that it was written by a female author, and a modest one at that.

In venturing to offer to the public, and more particularly to the female sex, an Introduction to Chemistry, the author, herself a woman, conceives that some explanation may be required; and she feels it the more necessary to apologise for the present undertaking, as her knowledge of the subject is but recent, and as she can have no real claims to the title of chemist.3

The scientific circle in which the Marcets moved provided plenty of opportunity for feedback on her work. Jane showed her dialogues to the prominent Genevan scientific journalist Marc-Auguste Pictet who was visiting the Marcets at the time. He was impressed with what he saw and encouraged her to persevere. Another of Alexander’s associates, Dr Yelloly, the English physician with whom Alexander founded the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, was asked for his opinion, which was also favourable. He made some suggestions for improving the text, largely concerned with matters of style. Jane’s approach was a little too familiar for these academics and she was urged to make her style less chatty. This is perhaps surprising considering the complexity of some of the language and sentence structure used in the text! Yelloly negotiated a favourable publishing deal with Longman for Jane’s book. Longman arranged for yet another male academic to check over the script – this time Arthur Aikin, an English chemist and scientific writer. When he gave it his seal of approval, Longman offered to publish Jane’s Conversations on Chemistry at no cost to the Marcets, taking instead a share of the profits as their payment.

Conversations on Chemistry was a huge success and was regularly updated, running to sixteen editions in England. According to Longman’s records, Conversations on Chemistry had sold 20,000 copies by 1865. It wasn’t until the twelfth edition in 1832 that Jane’s name appeared on the cover for the first time.

It was also extremely popular in America, where it is estimated that around 160,000 copies were sold, including one to US President Thomas Jefferson. The American version went through twenty-three editions plus a further twelve editions of an unauthorised adaptation by Thomas Jones called New Conversations on Chemistry. There was nothing Jane could do about her work being copied as US copyright laws did not extend to foreign publications, meaning that American publishers could revise, alter and extend her work as much as they liked.

Conversations on Chemistry proved very popular as a textbook for teaching chemistry to girls in American schools. In the introduction of his unauthorised adaptation in 1832, Jones wrote: ‘The Conversations on Chemistry,

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