Tag Archives: Desmond Clarke

wedgwood: let it be with the lunarticks

In the 1790′s however, this great group was fast breaking up. The turn of the century saw the death of many. Thomas Day was killed from a fall from his horse in 1789- with characteristic perversity he had refused to … Continue reading

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eureka moments

The core of Josiah Wedgwood’s circle was completed by the two who had, perhaps, the greatest worldly success- Matthew Boulton and James Watt- and by the one who has been credited with the least, Wedgwood’s partner, Thomas Bentley. The contrast … Continue reading

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to baffle human woes

The fruits of Richard Lovell Edgeworth’s erratic career were four marriages, twenty-two children, many ingenious but useless inventions, and an important book on education. Josiah Wedgwood and his friends. They were the most brilliant group in England, and quite possibly … Continue reading

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it’s backfirin’ now

Josiah Wedgwood and his friends. A diverse lot, both batty, brilliant and eccentric, they are mostly relegated minor figures of eighteenth century English life today, but some of them changed the world… When in 1785, Pitt’s abortive scheme for parliamentary … Continue reading

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chains and chimes of freedom

John Howard, friend of the Josiah Wedgwood circle, worked for prison reform, striding through the foul smelling jails of eighteenth-century England, in Erasmus Darwin’s words, “if not to sever, to relax the chains.” They themselves pressed for the abolition of … Continue reading

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decided and optimistic views

Josiah Wedgwood and his friends were the most brilliant group in England in the eighteenth-century- brilliant if highly eccentric. Most are forgotten today, but collectively they changed the world… Devotion to science and a respect for the arts were not … Continue reading

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