The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men comprised ten volumes of Dionysius Lardner's 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846). Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read.
The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Within the set of ten, the three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835–37) and the two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838–39) consist of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Shelley's biographies reveal her as a professional woman of letters, contracted to produce several volumes of works and paid well to do so. Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography are reflected in these works.
At times Shelley had trouble finding sufficient research materials and had to make do with fewer resources than she would have liked, particularly for the Spanish and Portuguese Lives. She wrote in a style that combined secondary sources, memoir, anecdote, and her own opinions. Her political views are most obvious in the Italian Lives, where she supports the Italian independence movement and promotes republicanism; in the French Lives she portrays women sympathetically, explaining their political and social restrictions and arguing that women can be productive members of society if given the proper educational and social opportunities.
The Lives did not attract enough critical attention to become a bestseller. A fair number were printed and sold, however, and far more copies of the Lives circulated than of Shelley's novels. Some of the volumes were illegally copied in the United States, where they were praised by the poet and critic Edgar Allan Poe. Not reprinted until 2002, Mary Shelley's biographies have until recently received little academic appreciation.
Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia
During the first quarter of the 19th century, self-improvement literature became an important portion of the book market: "it was the age of the 'Family Library' edition".Crook, xix. In his article on the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Morse Peckham writes that this "revolution in literacy, [was] partly the result of the spread of liberal ideas by the French Revolution, [and] partly of the desire to combat those ideas by teaching the poor to read the Bible and religious tracts [... It] was to have an effect on modern society almost as profound as the industrial and agricultural revolutions".Peckham, 38; for a longer explanation of this phenomenon, see Smith, 128–31. Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, published between 1829 and 1846, was one of the most successful of these enterprises, which also included John Murray's Family Library and the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.Crook, xix; Kucich, "Biographer", 227; Peckham, 37. Although intended for the "general reader", the series was aimed specifically at the middle class rather than the masses: each volume cost six shillings, prohibiting purchase by the poor.Crook, xx; Kucich, "Biographer", 235; Peckham, 42. The advertisements for the Cyclopaedia describe the expected audience as "merchants, captains, families, [and] new-married couples".Qtd. in Kucich, "Biographer", 235. The prospectus assured its readers that "nothing will be admitted into the pages of the 'CABINET CYCLOPAEDIA' which can have the most remote tendency to offend public or private morals. To enforce the cultivation of religion and the practice of virtue should be a principal object with all who undertake to inform the public mind."Qtd. in Peckham, 41.
The series was divided into five "Cabinets": Arts and Manufactures, Biography, History, Natural History, and Natural Philosophy. The advertisement claimed these covered "all the usual divisions of knowledge that are not of a technical and professional kind".Qtd. in Crook, xx; see also Kucich, "Biographer", 227. Unlike other encyclopedias of the time, Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia arranged its articles topically rather than alphabetically.Peckham, 40. The series eventually contained 61 titles in 133 volumes and customers could purchase a single volume, a single cabinet, or the entire set.Crook, xx; Peckham, 37. The first volume was published in December 1829 by Longman, Reese, Orme, Browne, Greene, and John Taylor.Crook, xx. Thirty-eight identified authors contributed (others are unidentified);Peckham, 37. Mary Shelley was the only female contributor and the eighth most productive.
Reverend Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a science lecturer at University College London, started the Cabinet Cyclopaedia in 1827 or 1828. The authors who contributed to the volumes spanned the political spectrum and included many luminaries of the day. James Mackintosh, Walter Scott, Thomas Moore, and Connop Thirlwall wrote histories; Robert Southey wrote naval biographies; Henry Roscoe wrote legal biographies; John Herschel wrote on astronomy and the philosophy of science; August De Morgan wrote on mathematics; David Brewster wrote on optics; and Lardner himself wrote on mathematics and physics.Peckham, 43–44. Authors were usually paid about £200 for each volume, though some contracts were much higher or lower. For example, Irish poet Thomas Moore was contracted to write a two-volume History of Ireland for £1,500.Crook, xxiv, note a. One of the reasons the overall project ran into difficulty may have been that it overpaid well-known writers.Crook, xxiv. Peckham speculates that the reason many of the famous writers listed on the prospectus never participated was because of the project's financial problems. The 19 substitute contributors were, he writes, "at the time and subsequently a far less distinguished group than Lardner had originally announced".Peckham, 47.
The books were relatively expensive to print, because of the Corbould and Finden illustrations, the images for the scientific volumes, and the use of Spottiswoode's printing house.Crook, xxv. In order to cut costs, the publishers decided to use small print and narrow margins. An estimated 4,000 copies of the first edition of the early volumes were printed, but the print run would probably have fallen to 2,500 since the sales did not pick up after 1835. As it became clear that the series was not going to take off, fewer review copies were sent out and advertisements became smaller. Lardner's interest in the project may also have waned, as he paid less attention to its business dealings. However, some volumes of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia remained in print until 1890.Crook, xxvi.
Because of the popularity of encyclopedias at the beginning of the 19th century, the Cabinet Cyclopaedia did not receive enough critical notice to make it a bestseller. Often the reviews were "perfunctory". However, some individual writers received attention. Moore, for example, was given a front-page spread in the Literary Gazette for his history of Ireland.Crook, xxiv–v. Shelley's volumes received 12 reviews in total—a good number—but "her name was never fully exploited" in the project; whether by her choice or Lardner's, it is unclear. Nevertheless, Peckham writes that "the Cyclopaedia on the whole was a distinguished and valuable work", and some of the individual volumes became famous.Peckham, 48.
Mary Shelley's contributions
Written during the last productive decade of Mary Shelley's career,Morrison, 129. her contributions fill about three-quarters of these five volumesKucich, "Biographer", 227. and reveal her to be a professional woman of letters. They demonstrate her knowledge of several languages and historical research covering several centuries, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography.Kucich, "Biographer", 228. She "wrote with many books to hand – reading (or rereading) some, consulting others, cross-referring, interweaving abridged and paraphrased source material with her own comment".Crook, xxix. Shelley combined secondary sources with memoir and anecdote and included her own judgments, a biographical style made popular by the 18th-century critic Samuel Johnson in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81).Crook, xxvii; Mazzeo, xli. She describes this technique in her "Life of Metastasio":
William Godwin's theories of biographical writing significantly influenced Shelley's style. Her father believed that biography could tell the history of a culture as well as serve a pedagogical function.Guerra, 224. Shelley felt that her nonfiction works were better than her fiction, writing in 1843 to publisher Edward Moxon: "I should prefer quieter work, to be gathered from other works—such as my lives for the Cyclopedia—& which I think I do much better than romancing."Qtd. in Walling, 126.
The 18th century had seen a new kind of history emerge, with works such as David Hume's History of England (1754–63). Frustrated with traditional histories that highlighted only military and monarchical history, Hume and others emphasised commerce, the arts, and society.Kucich, "Biographer", 229. Combined with the rise of sensibility at the end of the 18th century, this "produced an unprecedented historical interest in the social, the inward, and particularly the realm of affect". These topics and this style explicitly invited women into the discussion of history as both readers and writers. However, since this new history often subordinated the private sphere to the public, women writers took it upon themselves to bring "sentimental and private elements" to the centre of historical study.Kucich, "Biographer", 230. In this way, they argued for the political relevance of women, claiming, for example, that women's sympathy for those who suffered enabled them to speak for marginalised groups, such as slaves or the poor.Kucich, "Biographer", 231.
Shelley practised this early form of feminist historiography. Biographical writing was, in her words, supposed to "form as it were a school in which to study the philosophy of history" and to teach "lessons".Qtd. in Kucich, "Biographer", 228. These "lessons" consisted, most frequently and importantly, of criticisms of male-dominated institutions, such as primogeniture.Kucich, "Biographer", 236. She also praises societies that are progressive with regard to gender relations—she wrote, for example, "No slur was cast by the [Renaissance era] Italians on feminine accomplishments ... Where abstruse learning was a fashion among men, they were glad to find in their friends of the other sex, minds educated to share their pursuits".Qtd. in Kucich, "Biographer", 236.