| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804. By Robert E. Schofield. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xvi, 461 pp. $55.00, ISBN 0-271-02459-3.)

Radical in politics, iconoclastic in intellectual style, brilliant in experimental science, Joseph Priestley was also a friend to the rebellious American colonies and then, after 1794, a resident in the American republic until his death in 1804. In the turbulent decade of the 1790s Priestley played a leading role, first in Britain as a supporter of the French Revolution and then in America as a vocal anti-Federalist. Controversy became the by-word of his life. In 1791 when a Birmingham mob destroyed his home and laboratory—and endangered the lives of himself and his wife—Priestley became a symbol of the virulence of British political repression, often sanctioned by the highest circles of government authority. Yet none of these details capture the central thread dominating his life's work: his devout Presbyterian, then Unitarian, identity complete with a millenarian fervor that saw predictive signs in every political event. First and foremost, while he experimented and philosophized, Priestley preached and, in sermon and pamphlet, defended a unique vision.

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