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Full Description
Sir John Hill (1714-1775) was one of Georgian England's most vilified men despite having contributed prolifically to its medicine, science and literature. Born into a humble Northamptonshire family, the son of an impecunious God-faring Anglican minister, he started out as an apothecary, went on to collect natural objects for the great Whig lords and became a botanist of distinction. But his scandalous behavior prevented his election to the Royal Society and entry to all other professions for which he was qualified. Today, we can understand his actions as the result of a personality disorder; then he was understood entirely in moral terms. When he saw the dye cast he turned to journalism and publication, and strove maniacally to succeed without patronage. As a writer he was also cut down in ferocious 'paper wars'. Yet by the time he died, he had been knighted by the Swedish monarch and become a household name among scientists and writers throughout Britain and Europe. His life was a series of paradoxes without coherence, perhaps because he was above all a provocateur.
In time he would also become a filter for the century in which he lived: its personalities—great and small—as well as the broad canvas of its culture, and for this reason any biography necessarily stretches beyond the man himself to those whose profiles he also illuminates.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Illustrations
Anticipations
One
1. The mountebank's road out
2. Amidst the trees in Sussex
3. Apothecary Hill, almost FRS
4. Deranged by disappointment
Two
5. Three strikes in revenge
6. Man of letters
7. Puffing 'Inspector Hill'
Three
8. The 'lion' at the Bedford
9. Riot in Ranelagh
10. Hill and the 'Fame Machine'
11. Canning and Marriage
Four
12. Philosophy and botany
13. Botany and Bute
14. Hill and Linnaeus
Five
15. The Theatre Too
16. Annus Mirabilis 1758-59
17. The Final Blow
Six
18. Knighthood and death
19. Lady Hill persists
20. Forgotten Hill
Afterword: On the Trail of John Hill
Dramatis Personae
Appendix A
Appendix B
Abbreviations
Bibliography
