Half-day international symposium. Friday 7 June 2019 at 2-8 pm. Free admission.
The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS
Founded in 1799, the Royal Institution became the home of science education and the site of scientific discoveries and technological innovations which changed the world. In its early years, this remarkable scientific agenda was accompanied by an equally impressive programme of literary education, as luminaries such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Campbell and Sydney Smith took to the lecture podium to dazzle the fashionable male and female audiences of London with the latest advances in literary criticism and aesthetics. Science, poetry and philosophy combined in the work of the ‘chemical philosopher’ Humphry Davy and his literary friends, making the Royal Institution a centre of Romanticism as well as a focal point of the thriving public lecture culture of the time. This half-day symposium with talks by leading scholars will restore the forgotten literary history of the Royal Institution and highlight its unique interdisciplinary contribution to British Romantic culture.
Speakers: David Duff (Queen Mary University of London), Frank James (Royal Institution), Hattie Lloyd Edmondson (Science Museum), Seamus Perry (University of Oxford), Sharon Ruston (University of Lancaster), Sarah Zimmerman (Fordham University)
The event will conclude with a wine reception to celebrate the launch of Sarah Zimmerman’s new book The Romantic Literary Lecture in Britain (Oxford University Press), based partly on research done at the Royal Institution.
The event is free and open to everyone, including members of the public.
Click here for further details and to register for a free place
Organisers: David Duff d.duff@qmul.ac.uk; Sarah Zimmerman Zimmerman@fordham.edu
Sponsored by the London-Paris Romanticism Seminar, the Fordham Romanticism Group, Queen Mary University of London, and the Royal Institution of Great Britain
