The Making of a Bestseller: Alexander and Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry

Abstract

Jane Marcet (1769–1858) authored several works of popular science, the foremost of these being Conversations on Chemistry which first appeared in Great Britain in 1806, without the author’s name. That it ran to 16 British and at least 23 American editions (plus further adaptations) during Marcet’s lifetime, as well as being translated into French, German, and Italian, provides some indication of the book’s popular success. In this chapter, we outlined the collaboration of Jane and Alexander Marcet in the successful production of Conversations on Chemistry. A previously little-exploited source confirms that the book was not, as is sometimes assumed, the work of Jane alone; her husband Alexander took a signi?cant role in the work’s conception and realization. Alexander’s testimony as given in his private notebooks, Jane’s exposure to his note cards and rehearsed lectures on mineral chemistry, Jane’s use of Alexander’s “Lecture on Electro-Chemistry,” and the back-and-forth writing and rewriting they performed in producing the Chemistry all demonstrate an interaction between the Marcets which superceded the husband-teacher/wife-pupil relation- ship, achieving a complementary partnership indeed.