Thomas Beddoes was the pioneering doctor and chemical researcher who in the 1790s established the Pneumatic Institution to conduct experimental treatments with oxygen, hydrocarbonate and nitrous oxide — using apparatus provided by James Watt. He also published on iron smelting, Huttonian geology, preventive medicine, revolutionary politics, and educational reform. He was a poet, and the friend and mentor of Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Humphry Davy and Thomas Wedgwood. Married to Anna Edgeworth, he corresponded with Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Maria Edgeworth, with Thomas Clarkson, James Black, Joseph Banks and the Duchess of Devonshire.
In anticipation of a full-scale book edition of his collected letters with Cambridge University Press, we are creating an online edition of unannotated transcriptions. The first tranche is available here: https://beddoes.dmu.ac.uk/TBprojecthome.html. Enjoy!