Enlightenment sociability and provincial culture: Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Wright friends

This book examines the sustained friendship between enlightenment physician and poet Erasmus Darwin, artist Joseph Wright of Derby, and their provincial artistic, literary and scientific associates, providing fresh insights into their provincial cultural milieu and demonstrating how they forged and maintained national and international reputations. In 1796, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited Derby and declared it was ‘full of curiosities, the cotton, the silk mills, Wright, the painter, and Dr Darwin, the everything, except the Christian!’ Certainly, the physician Erasmus Darwin and painter Joseph Wright are two of the most celebrated British figures of the eighteenth century. Darwin was a poet, inventor, evolutionary thinker and co-founder of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. Wright created some of the most iconic artworks of the age, including The Lecture on the Orrery (1766) and Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768). Whilst the two were increasingly bound together as the leading ‘celebrities’ of eighteenth-century Derby, they were interlinked by much more. As Wright’s health declined, he increasingly relied on Darwin as friend, doctor, counsellor and artistic adviser. Darwin celebrated Wright’s achievements in his poetry, whilst Wright’s paintings informed Darwin’s understanding of art, taste, literature and psychology. Wright’s portraits of Darwin also reinforced the physician’s reputation. The two were also central to a vibrant network of savants and literati that included members of the Lunar and Derby Philosophical societies, the poets Anna Seward and William Hayley and the writer Eliza Hayley. Yet despite their prominence, there has never been a detailed study of the culture and geographies of Darwin, Wright and their circles, nor the depth of their mutual influence. Drawing on rich sources including the Joseph Wright collection at Derby, Darwin and Hayley archives in Cambridge, and materials from Midland libraries and record offices, this book offers a revelatory analysis of their friendship and the Enlightenment milieu that sustained it. It shows how this provincial culture transcended local boundaries to produce some of the most original and characterful artistic and literary works of the age. This book makes a major original contribution to the history and geographies of enlightenment art, science, literature and medicine, arguing that the significance of the relationship between the doctor Erasmus Darwin, artist Joseph Wright and their literary and philosophical networks has hitherto received insufficient recognition. Darwin treated Wright for his health problems and the two assisted each other in developing social and professional circles and inspired each other’s work, aided by their formidable social and corresponding networks. Residing near each other in the English midlands for nearly forty years and sharing many friends, Wright’s reliance upon Darwin for medical help and psychological support increased as his health deteriorated. Darwin also provided advice upon Wright’s paintings suggesting themes and commenting upon their progression, and his own philosophy and psychology were shaped by discussions with his artistic friend and observations of his professional practice. Versions of Wright’s portraits of Darwin were eagerly commissioned circulated amongst friends and supporters, enhancing and sustaining both their reputations. This study provides revelatory insights into Darwin and Wright’s enlightenment world demonstrating how discourse between the two men and their friends stimulated a rich exchange of ideas and creative interplay.