ABSTRACT
The last years of the eighteenth century are well known as a time when large crowds flocked to hear lectures on chemistry; and indeed when chemistry seemed to be a science more fundamental than physics, penetrating below the shell and surface of things. When in the 1790s the young Humphry Davy taught himself the science, as an ambitious apothecary's apprentice, he used the textbooks of Lavoisier and of William Nicholson: but these were fairly stiff, and in 1806 there appeared two works which were directed specifically at beginners. These were Jane Marcet's anonymous Conversations on Chemistry, and Samuel Parkes' Chemical Catechism. Parkes' book is not a particularly easy read, and learning it would have been a painful business, requiring a real determination for self-improvement. Mrs. Marcet's book is much more of a work of art. This means that it is much better to read; but also that it is even harder to keep up to date.
