ABSTRACT
In his 1802 Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures, Humphry Davy ascribes powers that had been formerly ascribed to alchemists to the modern chemist. Davy's modern chemist, like the ancient alchemist, sees the world as constantly transforming matter, shifting and changing from one form to another. Davy was the pre-eminent English chemist of the early nineteenth century and he continued to be cited as an authority in literary texts published throughout the nineteenth century. In Mary Shelley's 1818 narrative of Victor Frankenstein's education, ancient alchemy is replaced by modern chemistry but the aspirations of the former continue and are realized in the latter. This chapter considers Bulwer-Lytton's novel, which retains the link between alchemy and the world of hermetic secret societies, and compares it to Balzac's The Alkahest. Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde can be likened to Frankenstein in its use of the scientific Gothic genre, where, in both cases, chemistry takes the role of the supernatural.
