ANN: reprint of Clerke's HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY

Sattre Press title #6 is now available: "A Popular History of Astronomy
During the Nineteenth Century", by Agnes M. Clerke. This is a well-known
reference work for the history of astronomy but it has been out of print
since 1902 and copies have become scarce.

Dr. Mary Brück, the author's biographer, has very kindly provided a new
foreword.

The Table of Contents is on the web page:

http://han.sattre-press.com/

Here is Mary Brück's new Foreword:

* * *

A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century was first
published in 1885. Its subject was the rise and progress of knowledge of
the celestial universe, including the `new astronomy' of stellar
spectroscopy.

The author was Agnes Mary Clerke (1842*1907), born and brought up in
Skibbereen, County Cork, in a professional Irish family. She and her
only sister never attended school but received their early education at
home from their cultivated parents. The father, a Dublin University
graduate, was well versed in the sciences, especially mathematics and
astronomy. He tutored his daughter in classical positional astronomy and
trigonometry through such texts as John Herschel's famous Outlines of
Astronomy. Intellectually motivated, she and her sister later lived for
ten years in Florence, where they devoted themselves to serious study in
the city's libraries. Agnes' special interest was the history of
science, which provided her with ample material when in 1877 she settled
in London at the start of her literary career.

Clerke was already an experienced writer before she embarked on her
History, being a regular but anonymous contributor to the prestigious
Edinburgh Review and the author of several biographies in the
Encyclopedia Britannica. Yet she remained elusive until the Popular
History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century was put before the
public. This, her first book, was an instant success and brought her
into fruitful contact with the leading astronomers of the day, at home
and abroad. They included William Huggins, Norman Lockyer, David Gill,
Edward Holden, Edward Pickering and George Ellery Hale.

Until the end of the eighteenth century, astronomy was chiefly concerned
with the dynamics of the solar system. Since the time of Newton this
meant ever more refined application of the law of gravitation to the
motions of its various members. The stars, at immeasurable distances,
were, for the most part, a celestial backdrop. The question of what the
stars and nebulae really are, and what their place is in the wider
universe, was tackled head on for the first time by William Herschel,
and it was with Herschel's earliest observation, of the Orion Nebula, in
1774, that Agnes Clerke opened her history of `physical and descriptive
astronomy.' The century that followed Herschel saw landmark
technological breakthroughs: the measurement of the distances of the
stars; the development of photography; the applications of spectroscopy.
With improved telescopes came more detailed knowledge of the sun and the
physical appearances of the planets. There were also exciting
discoveries: the planets Uranus and Neptune; the first asteroids, and
new planetary satellites.

A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century recounted
this story in a logical order up to the time of writing. The treatment
was `popular,' by which Clerke meant `popular in the sense of eschewing
mathematical formulae,' not in the sense of `evading difficulties.'

The book appeared at a time of unprecedented progress in the field. New
observatories such as Lick in California were founded and existing ones
re-equipped; there were huge advances in the collection of astronomical
data, leading to projects such as the Henry Draper Memorial catalog of
stellar spectra and the International Chart of the Heavens. These
advances were taken care of in a revised new edition of Clerke's
History, prepared with expert advice and illustrated by photographs,
which was published in 1893. The fourth and last edition of 1902,
retaining the same plan as that of 1893, was a further updating. It used
the same illustrations, adding just one new one * the great comet of
1901.

This is the edition which is reproduced in this volume.

Agnes Clerke's opus remains an unrivaled source of readable, accurate
information on a great age of revolution in astronomy, the age that laid
the foundations of modern astrophysics and cosmology.

Mary Brück
Penicuik, Scotland

* * *

-Bill
--
Sattre Press History of Astronomy
http://sattre-press.com/ During the 19th Century
by Agnes M. Clerke
http://han.sattre-press.com/