Looking for Longitude

Reviews / Votes

Katy Barrett's lively, generously illustrated book examines a controversial topic - the problem of longitude - that gripped eighteenth-century London, with its coffee-house conversations, sharp-eyed artists, industrious problem-solvers and jaded literati. Barrett deftly evokes the cultural contexts that explain the fascination this problem exercised over the public, which manifested itself in a wealth of printed images, pamphlets, magazine articles and books. Readers will learn why and how measuring longitude at sea proved intractable and provoked so much satire and debate; they will gain a wonderful sense of English society through this richly detailed and accomplished cultural history.

Ludmilla Jordanova, Emeritus Professor of History and Visual Culture at Durham University Looking for Longitude helps us to understand what the quest to determine longitude at sea tells us about eighteenth-century art, science, technology and society at a significant time in the life of the British nation. The book navigates the reader lucidly through complex debates in the cultural history of science and, importantly, recognises the potency of satire and comedy as arbiters of taste and intellect.

Prof. Greg Lynall, King Alfred Chair in English Literature, University of Liverpool 'In [Barrett's] study she has sifted through an astounding multitude of written documents and pictorial material dealing with "longitude" as a term connoting a material problem on the one hand and a metaphor in Britain at the time on the other... this book is a valuable and trailblazing contribution to the newer discussion about the cultural dimensions of shipping and navigation.' Wolfgang Koeberer, Mariner's Mirror '[A] remarkably well-researched account of the ways in which this long-running saga impacted on many areas of public discourse, thought and imagery. The print historian will be fascinated by the trove of relevant visual material the author has discovered, which ranges from the technical diagrams to satires and even paintings... this book is a valuable example of the intelligent ways in which contemporary historians have begun to use print as historical evidence.' Print Quarterly 'Barrett's work is well-researched-including a comprehensive bibliography of every eighteenth-century text written on longitude-but it is also a new approach to a very old question, and one well worth reading.' Manushag N. Powell, The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats