It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a supreme period for invention, for turning cottage industries into major ‘manufactories’, and for extraordinary development. It was also a time when the old rural economy, with good and bad years so linked to agriculture, became the wage-slave economy when overseers, good or bad, controlled the many thousands of workers under their command. The new developments might even take over ‘common land’, further destroying ancient ways.

Uglow’s title refers to the Lunar Society of Birmingham when, as she phrases it, ‘a gathering of like minded men’ assembled in each other’s houses on the Monday nearest to the full moon. They were not so much interested in astronomy as to see their way back home in the early hours. However these men were interested in everything, in better ways for doing things, in chemistry and magnetism, in electricity and experimentation, in making a budding industry profitable, and – if also possible – in profiting themselves. During those heady days of the mid-l8th century, when so much was new, nothing seemed impossible. Someone somewhere had learned of a new procedure. This could, perhaps, be useful for better pottery, improved glazes, cheaper buttons, easier energy, and more money, with extra funds always so necessary for more experimentation, more development, and yet another factory.

The names encountered in this book resound like a Who’s Who for all time – Smeaton, Priestley, Wedgwood, (Erasmus) Darwin, Spode, Boulton, Baskerville, Watt, Arkwright, Brindley, Newcomen, (Samuel) Galton. Virtually everyone who was witness to that most astounding century seems to have a place within these pages, the Wordsworths, the Wyatts, Wilberforce, John Wilkes, George Washington, and Horace Walpole (to flick just through the indexed Ws). People were not so much polymaths as fascinated by whatever took their fancy. Dr William Small, for example, was intrigued by medicine but, as this author reports, his ‘real interests lay in mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry’. So too with each of the big names from those days. John Baskerville, famous as a designer of typefaces, made ink with soot from solderers’ lamps and glazed his famous paper from a japanning technique he had used when covering metalware with layers of varnish. Everyone, or so it seems, was self-taught, and self-taught in everything. Who could possibly foretell what piece of information or education might not come in handy?

Jenny Uglow, a biographer and Honorary Visiting Professor at Warwick University, is equally all-embracing. She explains why Birmingham came to be, and the importance of non-conformist areas without a charter to shackle enterprise or craft guilds with their strict trading rules. She is certainly concerned with families, and no less so than the industrial patriarchs themselves who diligently attended to their nearest, dearest and even distant kin. (There are 23 distinct Wedgwoods listed in her index.)

She also tells the full story. It is true that James Watt was much influenced by observing steam pouring from a kettle, but he had a terrible time achieving the progress for which he is renowned. Even the Sabbath was permitted on one crucial occasion to interfere with his thinking, and money always did. His shop in Glasgow sold ‘mathematical and musical instruments’, a ‘newly invented apparatus for drawing in perspective’, and in it he repaired bagpipes, fifes and flutes. Apparently ‘everyone’ came to him with their problems. He and Josiah Wedgwood jointly experimented in the chemistry of clays and glazes, and Watt’s real introduction to steam had to wait until he was asked to repair the model of a Newcomen engine. This, in his perfectionist opinion, was a thing very poorly made. Not only that but it demanded too much steam and heat to keep it going. Watt himself always needed money to keep himself going and, at one low point, sold his shop and turned to surveying. Why not? It may have been the Age of Reason, but there was nothing unreasonable in switching disciplines, provided the new employment paid, or was exciting, or could lead to better performance elsewhere.

The need for good transport inevitably concentrated many minds. Although Erasmus Darwin once reckoned he had traveled 10,000 miles in a single year all journeying was difficult, for people and for goods. Birmingham initially favoured the manufacture of buttons, buckles and similar small-sized items, these being fashionable goods of value which were easy to transport. Roads could have 4ft deep ruts, as well as highwaymen. A third of Wedgwood’s pots were smashed en route. Even the new turnpikes were badly maintained, one traveller filling his notebook with steadfast criticism of them: ‘From Billericay to Tilbury of all the accursed roads that ever disgraced this Kingdom none can equal this’. No wonder the canals were so welcomed when they arrived.

Uglow’s book is a feast, just as that age was a feast, of novelty, of new enterprise, of excitement, and a belief that yet more novelty was just around the corner if someone’s experiment in another area could have some further application in one’s own. No wonder the Lunar men got together, and no wonder they talked deep into the night before setting off by moonlight to travel safely home, their minds then brimming with fresh news that someone else had gleaned.

Anthony Smith