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Heather Ewing is an architectural historian. She has worked for the Smithsonian and the Ringling Museum of Art. She lives in New York.
Heather Ewing is a graduate of Yale University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. She is currently a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, where she works as an architectural historian. The Lost World of James Smithson is her first book. She lives in New York.
The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian
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ISBN-13:
9781596917798
- Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
- Publication date: 12/10/2008
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 448
- File size: 11 MB
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In the mid-1830s, the United States learned that it was the beneficiary of a strange and unprecedented bequest. An Englishman named James Smithson, who had never set foot in the U.S., had left all his fortune to found in Washington "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." He left no further instructions, and the questions surrounding the extraordinary bequest sparked a rancorous decade-long debate in Congress.
Since its founding in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution has grown into the largest museum and research complex in the world. Known as "the Nation's Attic," it is the keeper of many of America's most treasured cultural icons-the Star-Spangled Banner, the Spirit of St. Louis, Lincoln's top hat, and Dorothy's ruby slippers. At its heart, however, has always been the mystery of its enigmatic benefactor.
Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries from archives across Europe and the United States-including the entirety of the Smithsonian's archive-Heather Ewing paints the fullest picture to date of James Smithson and his compelling story. The illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland, Smithson was born into the world of the ancien regime, where birth and name meant everything. He found a new future in science, the closest thing the eighteenth century had to a meritocracy. Against a backdrop of war and revolution, Smithson and his friends, who included many of the most famous scientists of the age, burst through boundaries at every turn, defying gravity in the first hot air balloons, upending the biblical timeline with their geological finds, and exploring the realm of the invisible with the discovery of new gases.
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Jonathan Yardley
If [Smithson] has now been brought back to life in this book, it is because Ewing has had the ingenuity and perseverance to seek out his story not merely in such papers of Smithson's that survive but in the stories of others. In "the libraries and archives of Europe, Britain, and the United States," in "the papers and diaries of others," in his bank records and other sources, Ewing—an architectural historian who has worked at the Smithsonian and now lives in New York—has assembled enough evidence so that "the protean blur of Smithson" gives way to "a man of infectious exuberance and ambition," a person with a fascinating (if still essentially mysterious) private life and a scientist of genuine standing and consequence at a time when chemistry, to which he devoted much of his life, was just coming into its own.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
This pleasing biography (the second recent one of Smithson, after 2003's The Stranger and the Statesmanby Nina Burleigh) tells the story of the enigmatic Englishman who left the United States a vast sum of money to found "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Ewing, an architectural historian who has worked at the Smithsonian, traces John Smithson's development as a "gentleman-scientist," describing his study of chemistry at Oxford in the 1780s; his membership in the Coffee House Philosophical Society, where learned men discussed scientific news; and his well-received scientific papers. Two of the most fascinating chapters focus on Smithson's will. Ewing hazards a few suggestions about why an English scientist would leave a huge bequest to the United States government, and she examines the controversy Smithson's gift set off—some argued against accepting what they viewed as Smithson's self-aggrandizing bequest. This book is possible only because Ewing is a dogged researcher in countless archives. References to Smithson in his friends' letters and diaries reveal not the dour recluse historians had once thought him to be but an exuberant if eccentric man with a zeal for learning and for life. Ewing ably conveys all this as well as the mysterious roots of the institution that bears his name. Illus. (Apr.)Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
The Smithsonian is known to most Americans, whether or not they have visited its main Castle or any of the attendant museums. However, Englishman James Smithson (born James Louis Macie), whose bequest created the Smithsonian, is an enigma. A disastrous fire at the Smithsonian in 1865 destroyed his on-site papers, manuscripts, diaries, equipment, and more. Seeking to build a picture of this man and discover what prompted his bequest to the United States, architectural historian Ewing has little to work with as she digs deep into the past, but she follows every scrap of information, from letters to bank records, and comes up with a vigorous picture of Smithson as a son, friend, companion, man, uncle, and scientist. She also marvelously re-creates the age in which Smithson lived, detailing his travels, his friends and their complicated relationships in society, his scientific contributions and connections, the politics of his times, the excitement new discoveries brought to science, as well as the excitement in society generally, with events such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Required for history of science collections and highly recommended for all libraries.—Michael D. Cramer Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
From the Publisher
Ewing's psychologically sensitive book gives us the man behind the name.” —Bookpage“...a charming biography.” —Philadelphia Inquirer
“A captivating, informative and beautifully written book.” —Bloomberg News
“Fascinating…. This book is possible only because Ewing is a dogged researcher….” —Publishers Weekly
“Marvelously re-creates the age in which Smithson lived…” —Library Journal
“Ewing has labored heroically to write….an amazing tale….” —Kirkus Reviews
“Discusses the world of the British intelligentsia in such a way as to provide a seamless narrative. Ms. Ewing's gracefully written book may represent the last word on James Smithson and his world.” —The Washington Times
“A lively history...gives this man of science his due.” —The DC Examiner
“ Ms. Ewing has turned up valuable new material, bringing to light her subject's "lost world"...” —New York Sun
“Superb....makes a valiant and convincing attempt to solve the mystery that its title implies...Ewing has had the ingenuity and perseverance to seek out his story not merely in such papers of Smithson's that survive but in the stories of others.” —Washington Post