JOSEPH PRIESTLEY

1733-1804

English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, globetrotter, liberal political theorist and discoverer of oxygen

read about Pristley at wikipedia

Priestley is credited with the independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.

Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he consistently tried to fuse Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism. In his metaphysical texts, Priestley attempted to combine theism, materialism, and determinism, a project that has been called "audacious and original". He believed that a proper understanding of the natural world would promote human progress and eventually bring about the Christian millennium. Priestley, who strongly believed in the free and open exchange of ideas, advocated toleration and equal rights for religious Dissenters, which also led him to help found Unitarianism in England. The controversial nature of Priestley's publications, combined with his outspoken support of the American Revolution and later the French Revolution, aroused public and governmental contempt; eventually forcing him to flee in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and church. He spent his last ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

A scholar and teacher throughout his life, Priestley made significant contributions to pedagogy, including the publication of a seminal work on English grammar and books on history; he prepared some of the most influential early timelines. The educational writings were among Priestley's most popular works. Arguably his metaphysical works, however, had the most lasting influence, as now considered primary sources for utilitarianism by philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer.

Bibliography

The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

Secondary materials

  • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
  • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
  • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
  • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
  • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
  • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
  • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
  • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
  • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
  • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
  • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
  • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
  • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
  • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
  • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
  • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
  • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
  • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
  • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
  • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
  • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
  • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
  • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
  • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
  • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
  • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
  • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
  • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
  • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

Primary materials

  • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
  • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
  • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
  • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
  • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
  • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

External links

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joseph Priestley.
 
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Joseph Priestley

Short online biographies

early life

1733–1755

COAT OF ARMS OF J PRIESTLEY
Coat of Arms of Joseph Priestley
WIKIPEDIA
Early life and education (1733–1755)
  • Daventry Academy
  • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

  • Educator and historian
    History of electricity
Leeds (1767–1773)
  • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
  • Religious controversialist
  • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
  • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
    Calne (1773–1780)
    • Materialist philosopher
    • Founder of British Unitarianism
    • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
    • Discovery of oxygen
      Birmingham (1780–1791)
      • Chemical Revolution
      • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
      • Birmingham riots of 1791
      Hackney (1791–1794)
       
      Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
       
      Legacy

      OCCUPATIONS

      KNOWN FOR

      AWARDS

      • Fellow of the Royal Society (1766)
      • Copley Medal (1772)
      birstall
      feldhead
      calvinist
      greek
      latin
      german
      italian
      french
      hebrew
      aramaic
      arabic
      illness
      stutter
      g haggerstone

      Priestley was born in Birstall (near Batley) in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to an established English Dissenting family who did not conform to the Church of England. He was the oldest of six children born to Mary Swift and Jonas Priestley, a finisher of cloth.

      Priestley was sent to live with his grandfather around the age of one. He returned home five years later, after his mother died. When his father remarried in 1741, Priestley went to live with his aunt and uncle, the wealthy and childless Sarah (d. 1764) and John Keighley, 3 miles (4.8 km) from Fieldhead.

      Priestley was a precocious child – at the age of four, he could flawlessly recite all 107 questions and answers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism – and his aunt sought the best education for him, intending him to enter ministry.

      During his youth, Priestley attended local schools, where he learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

      Around 1749, Priestley became seriously ill and believed he was dying. Raised as a devout Calvinist, he believed a conversion experience was necessary for salvation, but doubted he had had one. This emotional distress eventually led him to question his theological upbringing, causing him to reject election and to accept universal salvation. As a result, the elders of his home church, the Independent Upper Chapel of Heckmondwike, near Leeds, refused him admission as a full member.

      Priestley's illness left him with a permanent stutter and he gave up any thoughts of entering the ministry at that time.

      In preparation for joining a relative in trade in Lisbon, he studied French, Italian, and German in addition to Aramaic, and Arabic. He was tutored by the Reverend George Haggerstone, who first introduced him to higher mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, and metaphysics through the works of Isaac Watts, Willem's Gravesande, and John Locke.

      DAVENTRY ACADEMY

      Priestley eventually decided to return to his theological studies and, in 1752, matriculated at Daventry, a Dissenting academy. Because he was already widely read, Priestley was allowed to omit the first two years of coursework. He continued his intense study; this, together with the liberal atmosphere of the school, shifted his theology further leftward and he became a Rational Dissenter. Abhorring dogma and religious mysticism, Rational Dissenters emphasised rational analysis of the natural world and the Bible.

      Priestley later wrote that the book that influenced him the most, save the Bible, was David Hartley's Observations on Man (1749). Hartley's psychological, philosophical, and theological treatise postulated a material theory of mind. Hartley aimed to construct a Christian philosophy in which both religious and moral "facts" could be scientifically proven, a goal that would occupy Priestley for his entire life.

      In his third year at Daventry, Priestley committed himself to the ministry, which he described as "the noblest of all professions."

      • Gray & Harrison: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, pp. 351-352
      • Schofield (1997), 2–12; Uglow, 72; Jackson, 19–25; Gibbs, 1–4; Thorpe, 1–11; Holt, 1–6.
      • Schofield (1997), 1, 7–8; Jackson, 25–30; Gibbs, 4; Priestley, Autobiography, 71–73, 123.
      • Schofield (1997), 14, 28–29; Uglow, 72; Gibbs, 5; Thorpe, 11–12; Holt, 7–9.
      • Schofield (1997), 28–29; Jackson, 30; Gibbs, 5.
      • McEvoy (1983), 48–49.
      • Qtd. in Jackson, 33. See Schofield (1997), 40–57; Uglow, 73–74; Jackson, 30–34; Gibbs, 5–10; Thorpe, 17–22; Tapper, 314; Holt, 11–14; Garrett, 54.

      Bibliography

      The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

      Secondary materials

      • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
      • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
      • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
      • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
      • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
      • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
      • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
      • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
      • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
      • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
      • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
      • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
      • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
      • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
      • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
      • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
      • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
      • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
      • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
      • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
      • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
      • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
      • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
      • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
      • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
      • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
      • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
      • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
      • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

      Primary materials

      • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
      • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
      • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
      • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
      • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
      • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

      External links

       
      Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
       
      Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joseph Priestley.
       
      Wikisource has original works by or about:
      Joseph Priestley

      Short online biographies

      Needham Market and Nantwich

      1755 – 1761

      WIKIPEDIA
      Early life and education (1733–1755)
      • Daventry Academy
      • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

      Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

      • Educator and historian
        History of electricity
      Leeds (1767–1773)
      • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
      • Religious controversialist
      • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
      • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
        Calne (1773–1780)
        • Materialist philosopher
        • Founder of British Unitarianism
        • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
        • Discovery of oxygen
          Birmingham (1780–1791)
          • Chemical Revolution
          • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
          • Birmingham riots of 1791
          Hackney (1791–1794)
           
          Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
           
          Legacy
          heterodoxy
          rudiments of english grammar

          BIOGRAPHICAL

          Robert Schofield, Priestley's major modern biographer, describes his first "call" in 1755 to the Dissenting parish in Needham Market, Suffolk, as a "mistake" for both Priestley and the congregation. Priestley yearned for urban life and theological debate, whereas Needham Market was a small, rural town with a congregation wedded to tradition. Attendance and donations dropped sharply when they discovered the extent of his heterodoxy. Although Priestley's aunt had promised her support if he became a minister, she refused any further assistance when she realised he was no longer a Calvinist. To earn extra money, Priestley proposed opening a school, but local families informed him that they would refuse to send their children. He also presented a series of scientific lectures titled "Use of the Globes" that was more successful.

          Priestley's Daventry friends helped him obtain another position and in 1758 he moved to Nantwich, Cheshire, living at Sweetbriar Hall in the town's Hospital Street; his time there was happier. The congregation cared less about Priestley's heterodoxy and he successfully established a school. Unlike many schoolmasters of the time, Priestley taught his students natural philosophy and even bought scientific instruments for them. Appalled at the quality of the available English grammar books, Priestley wrote his own: The Rudiments of English Grammar (1761). His innovations in the description of English grammar, particularly his efforts to dissociate it from Latin grammar, led 20th-century scholars to describe him as "one of the great grammarians of his time". After the publication of Rudiments and the success of Priestley's school, Warrington Academy offered him a teaching position in 1761.

          • Schofield (1997), 62–69.
          • Schofield (1997), 62–69; Jackson, 44–47; Gibbs, 10–11; Thorpe, 22–29; Holt, 15–19.
          • Priestley, Joseph. The Rudiments of English Grammar; adapted to the use of schools. With observations on style. London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1761.
          • Qtd. in Schofield (1997), 79.
          • Schofield (1997), 77–79, 83–85; Uglow, 72; Jackson 49–52; Gibbs, 13–16; Thorpe, 30–32; Holt, 19–23.

          Bibliography

          The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

          Secondary materials

          • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
          • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
          • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
          • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
          • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
          • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
          • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
          • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
          • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
          • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
          • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
          • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
          • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
          • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
          • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
          • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
          • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
          • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
          • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
          • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
          • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
          • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
          • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
          • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
          • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
          • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
          • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
          • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
          • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

          Primary materials

          • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
          • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
          • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
          • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
          • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
          • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

          External links

           
          Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
           
          Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joseph Priestley.
           
          Wikisource has original works by or about:
          Joseph Priestley

          Short online biographies

          warrington academy

          1761 – 1767

          Mary Priestley
          Wikipedia
          Early life and education (1733–1755)
          • Daventry Academy
          • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

          Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

          • Educator and historian
            History of electricity
          Leeds (1767–1773)
          • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
          • Religious controversialist
          • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
          • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
            Calne (1773–1780)
            • Materialist philosopher
            • Founder of British Unitarianism
            • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
            • Discovery of oxygen
              Birmingham (1780–1791)
              • Chemical Revolution
              • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
              • Birmingham riots of 1791
              Hackney (1791–1794)
               
              Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
               
              Legacy
              Priestley's "electrical machine for amateur experimentalists", illustrated in the first edition of his Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity (1768)
              Priestley's "electrical machine for amateur experimentalists", illustrated in the first edition of his Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity (1768)
              tutor
              wedgewood
              mary wilkinson
              Marriage
              daughter
              lectures
              charts
              doctor of law
              benjamin franklin
              electricity
              royal society

              In 1761, Priestley moved to Warrington in Cheshire and assumed the post of tutor of modern languages and rhetoric at the town's Dissenting academy although he would have preferred to teach mathematics and natural philosophy. He fit in well at Warrington and made friends quickly. These included the doctor and writer John Aikin, his sister the children's author Anna Laetitia Aikin, and the potter and businessman Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood met Priestley in 1762, after a fall from his horse. Wedgwood and Priestley met rarely, but exchanged letters, advice on chemistry, and laboratory equipment. Wedgwood eventually created a medallion of Priestley in cream-on-blue jasperware.

              On 23 June 1762, Priestley married Mary Wilkinson of Wrexham. Of his marriage, Priestley wrote:

              This proved a very suitable and happy connexion, my wife being a woman of an excellent understanding, much improved by reading, of great fortitude and strength of mind, and of a temper in the highest degree affectionate and generous; feeling strongly for others, and little for herself. Also, greatly excelling in every thing relating to household affairs, she entirely relieved me of all concern of that kind, which allowed me to give all my time to the prosecution of my studies, and the other duties of my station.

              On 17 April 1763, they had a daughter, whom they named Sarah after Priestley's aunt.

              educator and historian

              All of the books Priestley published while at Warrington emphasised the study of history; Priestley considered it essential for worldly success as well as religious growth. He wrote histories of science and Christianity in an effort to reveal the progress of humanity and, paradoxically, the loss of a pure, "primitive Christianity"

              J Priestley
              A redacted version of A New Chart of History (1765); Priestley believed this chart would "impress" upon students "a just image of the rise, progress, extent, duration, and contemporary state of all the considerable empires that have ever existed in the world.""

              In his Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life (1765), Lectures on History and General Policy (1788), and other works, Priestley argued that the education of the young should anticipate their future practical needs. This principle of utility guided his unconventional curricular choices for Warrington's aspiring middle-class students. He recommended modern languages instead of classical languages and modern rather than ancient history. Priestley's lectures on history were particularly revolutionary; he narrated a providentialist and naturalist account of history, arguing that the study of history furthered the comprehension of God's natural laws. Furthermore, his millennial perspective was closely tied to his optimism regarding scientific progress and the improvement of humanity. He believed that each age would improve upon the previous and that the study of history allowed people to perceive and to advance this progress. Since the study of history was a moral imperative for Priestley, he also promoted the education of middle-class women, which was unusual at the time. Some scholars of education have described Priestley as the most important English writer on education between the 17th-century John Locke and the 19th-century Herbert Spencer. Lectures on History was well received and was employed by many educational institutions, such as New College at Hackney, Brown, Princeton, Yale, and Cambridge. Priestley designed two Charts to serve as visual study aids for his Lectures. These charts are in fact timelines; they have been described as the most influential timelines published in the 18th century. Both were popular for decades, and the trustees of Warrington were so impressed with Priestley's lectures and charts that they arranged for the University of Edinburgh to grant him a Doctor of Law degree in 1764. During this period Priestley also regularly delivered lectures on rhetoric that were later published in 1777 as A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism.

              history of electricity

              The intellectually stimulating atmosphere of Warrington, often called the "Athens of the North" (of England) during the 18th century, encouraged Priestley's growing interest in natural philosophy. He gave lectures on anatomy and performed experiments regarding temperature with another tutor at Warrington, his friend John Seddon. Despite Priestley's busy teaching schedule, he decided to write a history of electricity. Friends introduced him to the major experimenters in the field in Britain—John Canton, William Watson, Timothy Lane, and the visiting Benjamin Franklin who encouraged Priestley to perform the experiments he wanted to include in his history. Priestley also consulted with Franklin during the latter's kite experiments. In the process of replicating others' experiments, Priestley became intrigued by unanswered questions and was prompted to undertake experiments of his own design. (Impressed with his Charts and the manuscript of his history of electricity, Canton, Franklin, Watson, and Richard Price nominated Priestley for a fellowship in the Royal Society; he was accepted in 1766.)

              In 1767, the 700-page The History and Present State of Electricity was published to positive reviews. The first half of the text is a history of the study of electricity to 1766; the second and more influential half is a description of contemporary theories about electricity and suggestions for future research. The volume also contains extensive comments on Priestley's views that scientific inquiries be presented with all reasoning in one's discovery path, including false leads and mistakes. He contrasted his narrative approach with Newton's analytical proof-like approach which did not facilitate future researchers to continue the inquiry. Priestley reported some of his own discoveries in the second section, such as the conductivity of charcoal and other substances and the continuum between conductors and non-conductors. This discovery overturned what he described as "one of the earliest and universally received maxims of electricity", that only water and metals could conduct electricity. This and other experiments on the electrical properties of materials and on the electrical effects of chemical transformations demonstrated Priestley's early and ongoing interest in the relationship between chemical substances and electricity. Based on experiments with charged spheres, Priestley was among the first to propose that electrical force followed an inverse-square law, similar to Newton's law of universal gravitation. He did not generalise or elaborate on this, and the general law was enunciated by French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb in the 1780s.

              Priestley's strength as a natural philosopher was qualitative rather than quantitative and his observation of "a current of real air" between two electrified points would later interest Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell as they investigated electromagnetism. Priestley's text became the standard history of electricity for over a century; Alessandro Volta (who later invented the battery), William Herschel (who discovered infrared radiation), and Henry Cavendish (who discovered hydrogen) all relied upon it. Priestley wrote a popular version of the History of Electricity for the general public titled A Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity (1768). He marketed the book with his brother Timothy, but unsuccessfully.

              • McLachlan, Iconography, 24–26.
              • Schofield, Robert E. (2009). Enlightened joseph priestley : a study of his life and work from 1773 to 1804. University Park: Penn State Univ Press. ISBN 978-0-271-03625-0. Retrieved 26 June 2018.
              • Meyer, Michal (2018). “Old Friends”. Distillations. 4 (1): 6–9. Retrieved 26 June 2018.
              • Bowden, Mary Ellen; Rosner, Lisa, eds. (2005). Joseph Priestley, radical thinker : a catalogue to accompany the exhibit at the Chemical Heritage Foundation commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Priestley, 23 August 2004 to 29 July 2005. Philadelphia, Penns.: Chemical Heritage Foundation. p. 26. ISBN 978-0941901383. Archived from the original on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 11 September 2014.
              • Priestley, Autobiography, 87.
              • See Thorpe, 33–44 for a description of life at Warrington; Schofield (1997), 89–90, 93–94; Jackson, 54–58; Uglow, 73–75; Thorpe, 47–50; Holt, 27–28.
              • Sheps, 135, 149; Holt, 29–30.
              • Qtd. in Sheps, 146.
              • Priestley, Joseph. Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life. London: Printed for C. Henderson under the Royal Exchange; T. Becket and De Hondt in the Strand; and by J. Johnson and Davenport, in Pater-Noster-Row, 1765.
              • Thorpe, 52–54; Schofield (1997), 124–25; Watts, 89, 95–97; Sheps, 136.
              • Schofield (1997), 121; see also Watts, 92.
              • Schofield (2004), 254–59; McLachlan (1987–90), 255–58; Sheps, 138, 141; Kramnick, 12; Holt, 29–33.
              • Priestley, Joseph. A Chart of Biography. London: J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1765 and Joseph Priestley, A Description of a Chart of Biography. Warrington: Printed by William Eyres, 1765 and Joseph Priestley, A New Chart of History. London: Engraved and published for J. Johnson, 1769; A Description of a New Chart of History. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1770.
              • Rosenberg, 57–65 and ff.
              • Gibbs, 37; Schofield (1997), 118–19.
              • J. Priestley. A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism. London, 1777. Ed. V. M. Bevilacqua & R. Murphy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965.
              • Schofield (1997), 136–37; Jackson, 57–61.
              • Isaacson, 2004, pp. 140–141, 182
              • Van Doren, pp. 164–165
              • Schofield (1997), 141–42, 152; Jackson, 64; Uglow 75–77; Thorpe, 61–65.
              • Schofield (1997), 143–44; Jackson, 65–66; see Schofield (1997), 152 and 231–32 for an analysis of the different editions.
              • Priestley, Joseph. The History and Present State of Electricity, with original experiments. London: Printed for J. Dodsley, J. Johnson and T. Cadell, 1767.
              • Schofield (1997), 144–56.
              • Schofield (1997), 156–57; Gibbs 28–31; see also Thorpe, 64.
              • Other early investigators who suspected that the electrical force diminished with distance as the gravitational force did (i.e., as the inverse square of the distance) included Daniel Bernoulli (see: Abel Socin (1760) Acta Helvetia, vol. 4, pp. 224–25.) and Alessandro Volta, both of whom measured the force between plates of a capacitor, and Aepinus. See: J.L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics (Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 460–62, 464 Archived 14 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine (including footnote 44).

              Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments (London, England: 1767), p. 732 Archived 28 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine: “May we not infer from this experiment, that the attraction of electricity is subject to the same laws with that of gravitation, and is therefore according to the squares of the distances; since it is easily demonstrated, that were the earth in the form of a shell, a body in the inside of it would not be attracted to one side more than another?”

              Bibliography

              The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

              Secondary materials

              • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
              • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
              • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
              • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
              • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
              • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
              • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
              • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
              • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
              • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
              • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
              • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
              • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
              • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
              • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
              • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
              • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
              • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
              • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
              • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
              • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
              • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
              • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
              • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
              • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
              • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
              • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
              • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
              • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

              Primary materials

              • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
              • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
              • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
              • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
              • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
              • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

              External links

               
              Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
               
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              Wikisource has original works by or about:
              Joseph Priestley

              Short online biographies

              leeds

              1767 – 1773

              "father of the soft drink" and a copley medal

              J Priestley
              The earliest known portrait of Priestley, known as the "Leeds" portrait (c. 1763); except for his membership on the Leeds Library Committee, Priestley was not active in the town's social life
              WIKIPEDIA
              Early life and education (1733–1755)
              • Daventry Academy
              • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

              Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

              • Educator and historian
                History of electricity
              Leeds (1767–1773)
              • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
              • Religious controversialist
              • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
              • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
                Calne (1773–1780)
                • Materialist philosopher
                • Founder of British Unitarianism
                • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
                • Discovery of oxygen
                  Birmingham (1780–1791)
                  • Chemical Revolution
                  • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
                  • Birmingham riots of 1791
                  Hackney (1791–1794)
                   
                  Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
                   
                  Legacy
                  mill hill chapel
                  sons
                  Socinianism
                  Pamphlet Wars
                  Theological Repository
                  William Blackstone
                  natural philosophy
                  carbonated water
                  schweppes
                  copley Medal
                  Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion
                  Remarks on Dr. Blackstone's Commentaries
                  essay on the first principles of government
                  The History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light and Colours
                  History of Electricity
                  Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air

                  Perhaps prompted by Mary Priestley's ill health, or financial problems, or a desire to prove himself to the community that had rejected him in his childhood, Priestley moved with his family from Warrington to Leeds in 1767, and he became Mill Hill Chapel's minister. Two sons were born to the Priestleys in Leeds: Joseph junior on 24 July 1768 and William three years later. Theophilus Lindsey, a rector at Catterick, Yorkshire, became one of Priestley's few friends in Leeds, of whom he wrote: "I never chose to publish any thing of moment relating to theology, without consulting him." Although Priestley had extended family living around Leeds, it does not appear that they communicated. Schofield conjectures that they considered him a heretic. Each year Priestley travelled to London to consult with his close friend and publisher, Joseph Johnson, and to attend meetings of the Royal Society.

                  Minister of Mill Hill Chapel

                  When Priestley became its minister, Mill Hill Chapel was one of the oldest and most respected Dissenting congregations in England; however, during the early 18th century the congregation had fractured along doctrinal lines, and was losing members to the charismatic Methodist movement. Priestley believed that by educating the young, he could strengthen the bonds of the congregation.

                  In his three-volume Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1772–74), Priestley outlined his theories of religious instruction. More importantly, he laid out his belief in Socinianism. The doctrines he explicated would become the standards for Unitarians in Britain. This work marked a change in Priestley's theological thinking that is critical to understanding his later writings—it paved the way for his materialism and necessitarianism (the belief that a divine being acts in accordance with necessary metaphysical laws).

                  Priestley's major argument in the Institutes was that the only revealed religious truths that could be accepted were those that matched one's experience of the natural world. Because his views of religion were deeply tied to his understanding of nature, the text's theism rested on the argument from design. The Institutes shocked and appalled many readers, primarily because it challenged basic Christian orthodoxies, such as the divinity of Christ and the miracle of the Virgin Birth. Methodists in Leeds penned a hymn asking God to "the Unitarian fiend expel / And chase his doctrine back to Hell." Priestley wanted to return Christianity to its "primitive" or "pure" form by eliminating the "corruptions" which had accumulated over the centuries. The fourth part of the Institutes, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, became so long that he was forced to issue it separately in 1782. Priestley believed that the Corruptions was "the most valuable" work he ever published. In demanding that his readers apply the logic of the emerging sciences and comparative history to the Bible and Christianity, he alienated religious and scientific readers alike—scientific readers did not appreciate seeing science used in the defence of religion and religious readers dismissed the application of science to religion.

                  religious controversialist

                  Priestley engaged in numerous political and religious pamphlet wars. According to Schofield, "he entered each controversy with a cheerful conviction that he was right, while most of his opponents were convinced, from the outset, that he was willfully and maliciously wrong. He was able, then, to contrast his sweet reasonableness to their personal rancor", but as Schofield points out Priestley rarely altered his opinion as a result of these debates. While at Leeds he wrote controversial pamphlets on the Lord's Supper and on Calvinist doctrine; thousands of copies were published, making them some of Priestley's most widely read works.

                  Priestley founded the Theological Repository in 1768, a journal committed to the open and rational inquiry of theological questions. Although he promised to print any contribution, only like-minded authors submitted articles. He was therefore obliged to provide much of the journal's content himself (this material became the basis for many of his later theological and metaphysical works). After only a few years, due to a lack of funds, he was forced to cease publishing the journal. He revived it in 1784 with similar results.

                  Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher

                  Many of Priestley's political writings supported the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which restricted the rights of Dissenters. They could not hold political office, serve in the armed forces, or attend Oxford and Cambridge unless they subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Dissenters repeatedly petitioned Parliament to repeal the Acts, arguing that they were being treated as second-class citizens.

                  Priestley's friends, particularly other Rational Dissenters, urged him to publish a work on the injustices experienced by Dissenters; the result was his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768). An early work of modern liberal political theory and Priestley's most thorough treatment of the subject, it—unusually for the time—distinguished political rights from civil rights with precision and argued for expansive civil rights. Priestley identified separate private and public spheres, contending that the government should have control only over the public sphere. Education and religion, in particular, he maintained, were matters of private conscience and should not be administered by the state. Priestley's later radicalism emerged from his belief that the British government was infringing upon these individual freedoms.

                  Priestley also defended the rights of Dissenters against the attacks of William Blackstone, an eminent legal theorist, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–69) had become the standard legal guide. Blackstone's book stated that dissent from the Church of England was a crime and that Dissenters could not be loyal subjects. Furious, Priestley lashed out with his Remarks on Dr. Blackstone's Commentaries (1769), correcting Blackstone's interpretation of the law, his grammar (a highly politicised subject at the time), and history. Blackstone, chastened, altered subsequent editions of his Commentaries: he rephrased the offending passages and removed the sections claiming that Dissenters could not be loyal subjects, but he retained his description of Dissent as a crime.

                  Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water

                  Although Priestley claimed that natural philosophy was only a hobby, he took it seriously. In his History of Electricity, he described the scientist as promoting the "security and happiness of mankind". Priestley's science was eminently practical and he rarely concerned himself with theoretical questions; his model was his close friend, Benjamin Franklin. When he moved to Leeds, Priestley continued his electrical and chemical experiments (the latter aided by a steady supply of carbon dioxide from a neighbouring brewery). Between 1767 and 1770, he presented five papers to the Royal Society from these initial experiments; the first four papers explored coronal discharges and other phenomena related to electrical discharge, while the fifth reported on the conductivity of charcoals from different sources. His subsequent experimental work focused on chemistry and pneumatics.

                  Priestley published the first volume of his projected history of experimental philosophy, The History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light and Colours (referred to as his Optics), in 1772. He paid careful attention to the history of optics and presented excellent explanations of early optics experiments, but his mathematical deficiencies caused him to dismiss several important contemporary theories. He followed the (corpuscular) particle theory of light, influenced by the works of Reverend John Rowning and others. Furthermore, he did not include any of the practical sections that had made his History of Electricity so useful to practising natural philosophers. Unlike his History of Electricity, it was not popular and had only one edition, although it was the only English book on the topic for 150 years. The hastily written text sold poorly; the cost of researching, writing, and publishing the Optics convinced Priestley to abandon his history of experimental philosophy.

                  Priestley was considered for the position of astronomer on James Cook's second voyage to the South Seas, but was not chosen. Still, he contributed in a small way to the voyage: he provided the crew with a method for making carbonated water, which he erroneously speculated might be a cure for scurvy. He then published a pamphlet with Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air (1772). Priestley did not exploit the commercial potential of carbonated water, but others such as J. J. Schweppe made fortunes from it. For his discovery of carbonated water Priestley has been labelled "the father of the soft drink", with the beverage company Schweppes regarding him as "the father of our industry". In 1773, the Royal Society recognised Priestley's achievements in natural philosophy by awarding him the Copley Medal.

                  Priestley's friends wanted to find him a more financially secure position. In 1772, prompted by Richard Price and Benjamin Franklin, Lord Shelburne wrote to Priestley asking him to direct the education of his children and to act as his general assistant. Although Priestley was reluctant to sacrifice his ministry, he accepted the position, resigning from Mill Hill Chapel on 20 December 1772, and preaching his last sermon on 16 May 1773.

                  • Schofield (1997), 162–64.
                  • Priestley, Autobiography, 98; see also Schofield (1997), 163.
                  • Schofield (1997), 162, note 7.
                  • Schofield, (1997), 158, 164; Gibbs, 37; Uglow, 170.
                  • Schofield (1997), 165–69; Holt, 42–43.
                  • Schofield (1997), 170–71; Gibbs, 37; Watts, 93–94; Holt, 44.
                  • Priestley. Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. London: Printed for J. Johnson, Vol. I, 1772, Vol. II, 1773, Vol. III, 1774.
                  • Miller, xvi; Schofield (1997), 172.
                  • Schofield (1997), 174; Uglow, 169; Tapper, 315; Holt, 44.
                  • Qtd. in Jackson, 102.
                  • McLachlan (1987–90), 261; Gibbs, 38; Jackson, 102; Uglow, 169.
                  • Schofield (1997), 181.
                  • See Schofield (1997), 181–88 for analysis of these two controversies.
                  • See Schofield (1997), 193–201 for an analysis of the journal; Uglow, 169; Holt, 53–55.
                  • See Schofield (2004), 202–7 for an analysis of Priestley’s contributions.
                  • Schofield (1997), 207.
                  • Schofield (1997), 202–05; Holt, 56–64.
                  • Priestley, Joseph. Essay on the First Principles of Government; and on the nature of political, civil, and religious liberty. London: Printed for J. Dodsley; T. Cadell; and J. Johnson, 1768.
                  • Gibbs, 39–43; Uglow, 169; Garrett, 17; Tapper, 315; Holt, 34–37; Philip (1985); Miller, xiv.
                  • Priestley, Joseph. Remarks on some paragraphs in the fourth volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the laws of England, relating to the Dissenters. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1769.
                  • Schofield (1997), 214–16; Gibbs, 43; Holt, 48–49.
                  • Qtd. in Kramnick, 8.
                  • Kramnick, 1981, p. 10
                  • Schofield (1997), 227, 232–38; see also Gibbs, 47; Kramnick, 9–10.
                  • Priestley, Joseph. Proposals for printing by subscription, The history and present state of discoveries relating to vision, light, and colours. Leeds: n.p., 1771.
                  • Moura, Breno (2018). “Newtonian Optics and the Historiography of Light in the 18th Century: A critical Analysis of Joseph Priestley’s The History of Optics”. Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science (5). doi:10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i5.12. ISSN 2526-2270. S2CID 239593348.
                  • Schofield (1997), 240–49; Gibbs, 50–55; Uglow, 134.
                  • Priestley, Joseph. Directions for impregnating water with fixed air; in order to communicate to it the peculiar spirit and virtues of Pyrmont water, and other mineral waters of a similar nature. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1772.
                  • Schofield (1997), 256–57; Gibbs, 57–59; Thorpe, 76–79; Uglow, 134–36; 232–34.
                  • Schils, René (2011). How James Watt Invented the Copier: Forgotten Inventions of Our Great Scientists. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 36.
                  • LaMoreaux, Philip E. (2012). Springs and Bottled Waters of the World: Ancient History, Source, Occurrence, Quality and Use. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 135.
                  • Schofield (1997), 251–55; see Holt, 64; Gibbs, 55–56; and Thorpe, 80–81, for the traditional account of this story.
                  • Schofield (1997), 270–71; Jackson, 120–22; Gibbs, 84–86: Uglow, 239–40; Holt, 64–65.

                  Bibliography

                  The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

                  Secondary materials

                  • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
                  • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
                  • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
                  • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
                  • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
                  • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
                  • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
                  • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
                  • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
                  • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
                  • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
                  • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
                  • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
                  • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
                  • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
                  • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
                  • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
                  • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
                  • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
                  • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
                  • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
                  • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
                  • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
                  • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
                  • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
                  • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
                  • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
                  • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
                  • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

                  Primary materials

                  • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
                  • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
                  • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
                  • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
                  • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
                  • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

                  External links

                   
                  Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
                   
                  Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joseph Priestley.
                   
                  Wikisource has original works by or about:
                  Joseph Priestley

                  Short online biographies

                  calne

                  1773 – 1780

                  J Priestley
                  WIKIPEDIA
                  Early life and education (1733–1755)
                  • Daventry Academy
                  • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

                  Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

                  • Educator and historian
                    History of electricity
                  Leeds (1767–1773)
                  • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
                  • Religious controversialist
                  • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
                  • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
                    Calne (1773–1780)
                    • Materialist philosopher
                    • Founder of British Unitarianism
                    • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
                    • Discovery of oxygen
                      Birmingham (1780–1791)
                      • Chemical Revolution
                      • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
                      • Birmingham riots of 1791
                      Hackney (1791–1794)
                       
                      Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
                       
                      Legacy
                      phlogiston
                      WORD
                      WORD

                      In 1773, the Priestleys moved to Calne in Wiltshire, and a year later Lord Shelburne and Priestley took a tour of Europe. According to Priestley's close friend Theophilus Lindsey, Priestley was "much improved by this view of mankind at large". Upon their return, Priestley easily fulfilled his duties as librarian and tutor. The workload was intentionally light, allowing him time to pursue his scientific investigations and theological interests. Priestley also became a political adviser to Shelburne, gathering information on parliamentary issues and serving as a liaison between Shelburne and the Dissenting and American interests. When the Priestleys' third son was born on 24 May 1777, they named him Henry at the lord's request.

                      Priestley wrote his most important philosophical works during his years with Lord Shelburne. In a series of major metaphysical texts published between 1774 and 1780—An Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind (1774), Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind on the Principle of the Association of Ideas (1775), Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated (1777), and Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever (1780)—he argues for a philosophy that incorporates four concepts: determinism, materialism, causation, and necessitarianism. By studying the natural world, he argued, people would learn how to become more compassionate, happy, and prosperous.

                      Priestley strongly suggested that there is no mind-body duality, and put forth a materialist philosophy in these works; that is, one founded on the principle that everything in the universe is made of matter that we can perceive. He also contended that discussing the soul is impossible because it is made of a divine substance, and humanity cannot perceive the divine. Despite his separation of the divine from the mortal, this position shocked and angered many of his readers, who believed that such a duality was necessary for the soul to exist.

                      Responding to Baron d'Holbach's Système de la Nature (1770) and David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) as well as the works of the French philosophers, Priestley maintained that materialism and determinism could be reconciled with a belief in God. He criticised those whose faith was shaped by books and fashion, drawing an analogy between the scepticism of educated men and the credulity of the masses.

                      Maintaining that humans had no free will, Priestley argued that what he called "philosophical necessity" (akin to absolute determinism) is consonant with Christianity, a position based on his understanding of the natural world. Like the rest of nature, man's mind is subject to the laws of causation, Priestley contended, but because a benevolent God created these laws, the world and the people in it will eventually be perfected. Evil is therefore only an imperfect understanding of the world.

                      Although Priestley's philosophical work has been characterised as "audacious and original", it partakes of older philosophical traditions on the problems of free will, determinism, and materialism. For example, the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza argued for absolute determinism and absolute materialism. Like Spinoza and Priestley, Leibniz argued that human will was completely determined by natural laws; unlike them, Leibniz argued for a "parallel universe" of immaterial objects (such as human souls) so arranged by God that its outcomes agree exactly with those of the material universe. Leibniz and Priestley share an optimism that God has chosen the chain of events benevolently; however, Priestley believed that the events were leading to a glorious millennial conclusion, whereas for Leibniz the entire chain of events was optimal in and of itself, as compared with other conceivable chains of events.

                      Founder of British Unitarianism

                      When Priestley's friend Theophilus Lindsey decided to found a new Christian denomination that would not restrict its members' beliefs, Priestley and others hurried to his aid. On 17 April 1774, Lindsey held the first Unitarian service in Britain, at the newly formed Essex Street Chapel in London; he had even designed his own liturgy, of which many were critical. Priestley defended his friend in the pamphlet Letter to a Layman, on the Subject of the Rev. Mr. Lindsey's Proposal for a Reformed English Church (1774), claiming that only the form of worship had been altered, not its substance, and attacking those who followed religion as a fashion. Priestley attended Lindsey's church regularly in the 1770s and occasionally preached there. He continued to support institutionalised Unitarianism for the rest of his life, writing several Defenses of Unitarianism and encouraging the foundation of new Unitarian chapels throughout Britain and the United States.

                      Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air

                      Priestley's years in Calne were the only ones in his life dominated by scientific investigations; they were also the most scientifically fruitful. His experiments were almost entirely confined to "airs", and out of this work emerged his most important scientific texts: the six volumes of Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774–86). These experiments helped repudiate the last vestiges of the theory of four elements, which Priestley attempted to replace with his own variation of phlogiston theory. According to that 18th-century theory, the combustion or oxidation of a substance corresponded to the release of a material substance, phlogiston.

                      Priestley's work on "airs" is not easily classified. As historian of science Simon Schaffer writes, it "has been seen as a branch of physics, or chemistry, or natural philosophy, or some highly idiosyncratic version of Priestley's own invention". Furthermore, the volumes were both a scientific and a political enterprise for Priestley, in which he argues that science could destroy "undue and usurped authority" and that government has "reason to tremble even at an air pump or an electrical machine".

                      Volume I of Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air outlined several discoveries: "nitrous air" (nitric oxide, NO); "vapor of spirit of salt", later called "acid air" or "marine acid air" (anhydrous hydrochloric acid, HCl); "alkaline air" (ammonia, NH3); "diminished" or "dephlogisticated nitrous air" (nitrous oxide, N2O); and, most famously, "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen, O2) as well as experimental findings that showed plants revitalised enclosed volumes of air, a discovery that would eventually lead to the discovery of photosynthesis. Priestley also developed a "nitrous air test" to determine the "goodness of air". Using a pneumatic trough, he would mix nitrous air with a test sample, over water or mercury, and measure the decrease in volume—the principle of eudiometry. After a small history of the study of airs, he explained his own experiments in an open and sincere style. As an early biographer writes, "whatever he knows or thinks he tells: doubts, perplexities, blunders are set down with the most refreshing candour." Priestley also described his cheap and easy-to-assemble experimental apparatus; his colleagues therefore believed that they could easily reproduce his experiments. Faced with inconsistent experimental results, Priestley employed phlogiston theory. This led him to conclude that there were only three types of "air": "fixed", "alkaline", and "acid". Priestley dismissed the burgeoning chemistry of his day. Instead, he focused on gases and "changes in their sensible properties", as had natural philosophers before him. He isolated carbon monoxide (CO), but apparently did not realise that it was a separate "air".

                      Discovery of oxygen

                      In August 1774 he isolated an "air" that appeared to be completely new, but he did not have an opportunity to pursue the matter because he was about to tour Europe with Shelburne. While in Paris, Priestley replicated the experiment for others, including French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. After returning to Britain in January 1775, he continued his experiments and discovered "vitriolic acid air" (sulphur dioxide, SO2).

                      In March he wrote to several people regarding the new "air" that he had discovered in August. One of these letters was read aloud to the Royal Society, and a paper outlining the discovery, titled "An Account of further Discoveries in Air", was published in the Society's journal Philosophical Transactions. Priestley called the new substance "dephlogisticated air", which he made in the famous experiment by focusing the sun's rays on a sample of mercuric oxide. He first tested it on mice, who surprised him by surviving quite a while entrapped with the air, and then on himself, writing that it was "five or six times better than common air for the purpose of respiration, inflammation, and, I believe, every other use of common atmospherical air". He had discovered oxygen gas (O2).

                      Priestley assembled his oxygen paper and several others into a second volume of Experiments and Observations on Air, published in 1776. He did not emphasise his discovery of "dephlogisticated air" (leaving it to Part III of the volume) but instead argued in the preface how important such discoveries were to rational religion. His paper narrated the discovery chronologically, relating the long delays between experiments and his initial puzzlements; thus, it is difficult to determine when exactly Priestley "discovered" oxygen. Such dating is significant as both Lavoisier and Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele have strong claims to the discovery of oxygen as well, Scheele having been the first to isolate the gas (although he published after Priestley) and Lavoisier having been the first to describe it as purified "air itself entire without alteration" (that is, the first to explain oxygen without phlogiston theory).

                      In his paper "Observations on Respiration and the Use of the Blood", Priestley was the first to suggest a connection between blood and air, although he did so using phlogiston theory. In typical Priestley fashion, he prefaced the paper with a history of the study of respiration. A year later, clearly influenced by Priestley, Lavoisier was also discussing respiration at the Académie des sciences. Lavoisier's work began the long train of discovery that produced papers on oxygen respiration and culminated in the overthrow of phlogiston theory and the establishment of modern chemistry.

                      Around 1779 Priestley and Shelburne – soon to be the 1st Marquess of Landsdowne – had a rupture, the precise reasons for which remain unclear. Shelburne blamed Priestley's health, while Priestley claimed Shelburne had no further use for him. Some contemporaries speculated that Priestley's outspokenness had hurt Shelburne's political career. Schofield argues that the most likely reason was Shelburne's recent marriage to Louisa Fitzpatrick—apparently, she did not like the Priestleys. Although Priestley considered moving to America, he eventually accepted Birmingham New Meeting's offer to be their minister.

                      Both Priestley and Shelburne's families upheld their Unitarian faith for generations. In December 2013, it was reported that Sir Christopher Bullock – a direct descendant of Shelburne's brother, Thomas Fitzmaurice (MP) – had married his wife, Lady Bullock, née Barbara May Lupton, at London's Unitarian Essex Church in 1917. Barbara Lupton was the second cousin of Olive Middleton, née Lupton, the great-grandmother of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. In 1914, Olive and Noel Middleton had married at Leeds' Mill Hill Chapel, which Priestley, as its minister, had once guided towards Unitarianism.

                      1. McLachlan, Iconography, 19–20.
                      2. Qtd. in Gibbs, 91.
                      3. Schofield (2004), 4–11; 406; Gibbs, 91–94; Jackson, 122, 124, 143–52, 158–62; Thorpe, 80–85; Watts, 96; Holt, 70–94 (includes large quotations from Priestley’s letters sent from Europe to Shelburne’s sons).
                      4. McEvoy and McGuire, 326–27; Tapper, 316.
                      5. Schofield (2004), 72.
                      6. Schofield (2004), 59–76; Gibbs, 99–100; Holt, 112–24; McEvoy and McGuire, 333–34.
                      7. Tapper, 320; Priestley, Autobiography, 111; Schofield (2004), 37–42; Holt, 93–94; 139–42.
                      8. Schofield (2004), 77–91; Garrett, 55; Tapper, 319; Sheps, 138; McEvoy (1983), 50; McEvoy and McGuire, 338–40.
                      9. Sheps, 138.
                      10. McEvoy and McGuire, 341–45.
                      11. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Confessio Philosophi: Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671–1678. Trans. Robert C. Sleigh, Jr. New Haven: Yale University Press (2004), xxxviii, 109. ISBN 978-0-300-08958-5. The original Latin text and an English translation of Leibniz‘s A Philosopher’s Creed can be found on the Latin and English Wikisources, respectively.
                      12. Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: W. W. Norton (2006), 171. ISBN 0-393-05898-0.
                      13. McEvoy and McGuire, 341.
                      14. Adams, Robert Merrihew. Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist. New York: Oxford University Press (1998), 10–13, 1–20, 41–44. ISBN 0-19-508460-8.
                      15. Rutherford, 213–18.
                      16. Rutherford, 46.
                      17. Schofield (2004), 78–79.
                      18. Rutherford, 12–15, 22–45, 49–54.
                      19. Priestley, Joseph. Letter to a Layman, on the Subject of the Rev. Mr. Lindsey’s Proposal for a Reformed English Church. London: Printed for J. Wilkie, 1774.
                      20. Schofield (2004), 26–28; Jackson, 124; Gibbs, 88–89; Holt, 56–64.
                      21. Schofield (2004), 225, 236–38.
                      22. Priestley, Joseph. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. 3 vols. London W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1774–77. There are several different editions of these volumes, each important.
                      23. See Gibbs 67–83 for a description of all of Priestley’s experiments during this time; Thorpe, 170ff.
                      24. Thorpe, 167–68; Schofield (2004), 98–101.
                      25. Schaffer, 152.
                      26. Qtd. in Kramnick, 11–12; see also Schofield (2004), 121–24.
                      27. Fruton, 20, 29
                      28. Schofield (2004), 98; Thorpe, 171.
                      29. Schofield (1997), 259–69; Jackson, 110–14; Thorpe, 76–77, 178–79; Uglow, 229–39.
                      30. Schofield (2004), 93–105; Uglow, 240–41; see Gibbs 105–16 for a description of these experiments.
                      31. Priestley, Joseph. “An Account of Further Discoveries in Air“. Philosophical Transactions 65 (1775): 384–94.
                      32. Qtd. in Schofield (2004), 107.
                      33. Wagner, P. (2012). Hypoxia. Springer. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-4419-8997-0. Retrieved 2 January 2024.
                      34. Schofield (2004), 105–19; see also Jackson, 126–27, 163–64, 166–74; Gibbs, 118–23; Uglow, 229–31, 241; Holt, 93.
                      35. Kuhn, 53–55.
                      36. Schofield (2004), 129–30; Gibbs, 124–25.
                      37. Schofield (2004), 141–43; see also Jackson, 198–99; Holt, 81–82.
                      38. Nikkah, Roya (16 December 2012). “The Duchess discovers blue blood in her own family”. UK Sunday Telegraph. p. 9. Archived from the original on 29 October 2014. Retrieved 8 July 2014.

                      Bibliography

                      The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

                      Secondary materials

                      • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
                      • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
                      • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
                      • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
                      • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
                      • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
                      • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
                      • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
                      • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
                      • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
                      • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
                      • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
                      • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
                      • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
                      • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
                      • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
                      • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
                      • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
                      • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
                      • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
                      • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
                      • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
                      • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
                      • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
                      • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
                      • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
                      • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
                      • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
                      • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

                      Primary materials

                      • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
                      • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
                      • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
                      • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
                      • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
                      • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

                      External links

                       
                      Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
                       
                      Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joseph Priestley.
                       
                      Wikisource has original works by or about:
                      Joseph Priestley

                      Short online biographies

                      birmingham

                      1780 - 1791

                      J Priestley
                      DOCTOR PHLOGISTON, The PRIESTLEY politician or the Political Priest: An anti-Priestley cartoon shows him trampling on the Bible and burning documents representing English freedom. "Essays on Matter and Spirit", "Gunpowder", and "Revolution Toasts" bulge from his pockets.
                      Wikipedia
                      Early life and education (1733–1755)
                      • Daventry Academy
                      • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

                      Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

                      • Educator and historian
                        History of electricity
                      Leeds (1767–1773)
                      • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
                      • Religious controversialist
                      • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
                      • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
                        Calne (1773–1780)
                        • Materialist philosopher
                        • Founder of British Unitarianism
                        • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
                        • Discovery of oxygen
                          Birmingham (1780–1791)
                          • Chemical Revolution
                          • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
                          • Birmingham riots of 1791
                          Hackney (1791–1794)
                           
                          Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
                           
                          Legacy
                          Lavoisier
                          Antoine Lavoisier and his wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, by Jacques-Louis David, 1788
                          J Priestley
                          One of a set of Lunar Society Moonstones commemorating Priestley at Great Barr, Birmingham
                          NEW MEETING
                          phlogiston
                          LUNAR SOCIETY
                          CHEMICAL REVOLUTION
                          Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
                          ABOLITIONIST
                          CORPORATION ACT
                          TEST ACTS
                          CARTOONS
                          An History of the Corruptions of Christianity
                          An History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ
                          The Importance and Extent of Free Enquiry

                          In 1780 the Priestleys moved to Birmingham and spent a happy decade surrounded by old friends, until they were forced to flee in 1791 by religiously motivated mob violence in what became known as the Priestley Riots. Priestley accepted the ministerial position at New Meeting on the condition that he be required to preach and teach only on Sundays, so that he would have time for his writing and scientific experiments. As in Leeds, Priestley established classes for the youth of his parish and by 1781, he was teaching 150 students. Because Priestley's New Meeting salary was only 100 guineas, friends and patrons donated money and goods to help continue his investigations. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782.

                          chemical revolution

                          Many of the friends that Priestley made in Birmingham were members of the Lunar Society, a group of manufacturers, inventors, and natural philosophers who assembled monthly to discuss their work. The core of the group included men such as the manufacturer Matthew Boulton, the chemist and geologist James Keir, the inventor and engineer James Watt, and the botanist, chemist, and geologist William Withering. Priestley was asked to join this unique society and contributed much to the work of its members. As a result of this stimulating intellectual environment, he published several important scientific papers, including "Experiments relating to Phlogiston, and the seeming Conversion of Water into Air" (1783). The first part attempts to refute Lavoisier's challenges to his work on oxygen; the second part describes how steam is "converted" into air. After several variations of the experiment, with different substances as fuel and several different collecting apparatuses (which produced different results), he concluded that air could travel through more substances than previously surmised, a conclusion "contrary to all the known principles of hydrostatics". This discovery, along with his earlier work on what would later be recognised as gaseous diffusion, would eventually lead John Dalton and Thomas Graham to formulate the kinetic theory of gases.

                          In 1777, Antoine Lavoisier had written Mémoire sur la combustion en général, the first of what proved to be a series of attacks on phlogiston theory; it was against these attacks that Priestley responded in 1783. While Priestley accepted parts of Lavoisier's theory, he was unprepared to assent to the major revolutions Lavoisier proposed: the overthrow of phlogiston, a chemistry based conceptually on elements and compounds, and a new chemical nomenclature. Priestley's original experiments on "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen), combustion, and water provided Lavoisier with the data he needed to construct much of his system; yet Priestley never accepted Lavoisier's new theories and continued to defend phlogiston theory for the rest of his life. Lavoisier's system was based largely on the quantitative concept that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions (i.e., the conservation of mass). By contrast, Priestley preferred to observe qualitative changes in heat, color, and particularly volume. His experiments tested "airs" for "their solubility in water, their power of supporting or extinguishing flame, whether they were respirable, how they behaved with acid and alkaline air, and with nitric oxide and inflammable air, and lastly how they were affected by the electric spark."

                          By 1789, when Lavoisier published his Traité Élémentaire de Chimie and founded the Annales de Chimie, the new chemistry had come into its own. Priestley published several more scientific papers in Birmingham, the majority attempting to refute Lavoisier. Priestley and other Lunar Society members argued that the new French system was too expensive, too difficult to test, and unnecessarily complex. Priestley in particular rejected its "establishment" aura. In the end, Lavoisier's view prevailed: his new chemistry introduced many of the principles on which modern chemistry is founded.

                          Priestley's refusal to accept Lavoisier's "new chemistry"—such as the conservation of mass—and his determination to adhere to a less satisfactory theory has perplexed many scholars. Schofield explains it thus: "Priestley was never a chemist; in a modern, and even a Lavoisierian, sense, he was never a scientist. He was a natural philosopher, concerned with the economy of nature and obsessed with an idea of unity, in theology and in nature." Historian of science John McEvoy largely agrees, writing that Priestley's view of nature as coextensive with God and thus infinite, which encouraged him to focus on facts over hypotheses and theories, prompted him to reject Lavoisier's system. McEvoy argues that "Priestley's isolated and lonely opposition to the oxygen theory was a measure of his passionate concern for the principles of intellectual freedom, epistemic equality and critical inquiry." Priestley himself claimed in the last volume of Experiments and Observations that his most valuable works were his theological ones because they were "superior [in] dignity and importance".

                          Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries

                          Although Priestley was busy defending phlogiston theory from the "new chemists", most of what he published in Birmingham was theological. In 1782 he published the fourth volume of his Institutes, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, describing how he thought the teachings of the early Christian church had been "corrupted" or distorted. Schofield describes the work as "derivative, disorganized, wordy, and repetitive, detailed, exhaustive, and devastatingly argued". The text addresses issues ranging from the divinity of Christ to the proper form for the Lord's Supper. Priestley followed up in 1786 with the provocatively titled book, An History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ, compiled from Original Writers, proving that the Christian Church was at first Unitarian. Thomas Jefferson would later write of the profound effect that these two books had on him: "I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them ... as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been answered." Although a few readers such as Jefferson and other Rational Dissenters approved of the work, it was harshly reviewed because of its extreme theological positions, particularly its rejection of the Trinity.

                          In 1785, while Priestley was engaged in a pamphlet war over Corruptions, he also published The Importance and Extent of Free Enquiry, claiming that the Reformation had not really reformed the church. In words that would boil over into a national debate, he challenged his readers to enact change:

                          Let us not, therefore, be discouraged, though, for the present, we should see no great number of churches professedly unitarian .... We are, as it were, laying gunpowder, grain by grain, under the old building of error and superstition, which a single spark may hereafter inflame, so as to produce an instantaneous explosion; in consequence of which that edifice, the erection of which has been the work of ages, may be overturned in a moment, and so effectually as that the same foundation can never be built upon again ....

                          Although discouraged by friends from using such inflammatory language, Priestley refused to back down from his opinions in print and he included it, forever branding himself as "Gunpowder Joe". After the publication of this seeming call for revolution in the midst of the French Revolution, pamphleteers stepped up their attacks on Priestley and he and his church were even threatened with legal action.

                          In 1787, 1789, and 1790, Dissenters again tried to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. Although initially it looked as if they might succeed, by 1790, with the fears of revolution looming in Parliament, few were swayed by appeals to equal rights. Political cartoons, one of the most effective and popular media of the time, skewered the Dissenters and Priestley. In Parliament, William Pitt and Edmund Burke argued against the repeal, a betrayal that angered Priestley and his friends, who had expected the two men's support. Priestley wrote a series of Letters to William Pitt and Letters to Burke in an attempt to persuade them otherwise, but these publications only further inflamed the populace against him.

                          Dissenters such as Priestley who supported the French Revolution came under increasing suspicion as scepticism regarding the revolution grew. In its propaganda against "radicals", Pitt's administration used the "gunpowder" statement to argue that Priestley and other Dissenters wanted to overthrow the government. Burke, in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), tied natural philosophers, and specifically Priestley, to the French Revolution, writing that the radicals who supported science in Britain "considered man in their experiments no more than they do mice in an air pump". Burke also associated republican principles with alchemy and insubstantial air, mocking the scientific work done by both Priestley and French chemists. He made much in his later writings of the connections between "Gunpowder Joe", science, and Lavoisier—who was improving gunpowder for the French in their war against Britain. Paradoxically, a secular statesman, Burke, argued against science and maintained that religion should be the basis of civil society, whereas a Dissenting minister, Priestley, argued that religion could not provide the basis for civil society and should be restricted to one's private life.

                          Priestley also supported the campaign to abolish the British slave trade and published a sermon in 1788 in which he declared that nobody treated enslaved people "with so much cruelty as the English".

                          BIRMINGHAM RIOTS

                          The animus that had been building against Dissenters and supporters of the American and French Revolutions exploded in July 1791. Priestley and several other Dissenters had arranged to have a celebratory dinner on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a provocative action in a country where many disapproved of the French Revolution and feared that it might spread to Britain. Amid fears of violence, Priestley was convinced by his friends not to attend. Rioters gathered outside the hotel during the banquet and attacked the attendees as they left. The rioters moved on to the New Meeting and Old Meeting churches—and burned both to the ground. Priestley and his wife fled from their home; although their son William and others stayed behind to protect their property, the mob overcame them and torched Priestley's house "Fairhill" at Sparkbrook, destroying his valuable laboratory and all of the family's belongings. Twenty-six other Dissenters' homes and three more churches were burned in the three-day riot. Priestley spent several days hiding with friends until he was able to travel safely to London. The carefully executed attacks of the "mob" and the farcical trials of only a handful of the "leaders" convinced many at the time—and modern historians later—that the attacks were planned and condoned by local Birmingham magistrates. When George III was eventually forced to send troops to the area, he said: "I cannot but feel better pleased that Priestley is the sufferer for the doctrines he and his party have instilled, and that the people see them in their true light."

                          • “Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter P” (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 May 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
                          • Schofield (2004), 151–52; for an analysis of Priestley’s contributions to each man’s work, see Schofield’s chapter “Science and the Lunar Society”; see also Jackson, 200–01; Gibbs, 141–47; Thorpe, 93–102; Holt, 127–32; Uglow, 349–50; for a history of the Lunar Society, see Uglow.
                          • Qtd. in Schofield (2004), 167
                          • Schofield (2004), 168; see also Jackson 203–08; Gibbs, 154–61; Uglow, 358–61.
                          • Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris année 1777 (1780): 592–600. The next, most notable installment was “Réflexions sur le phlogistique, pour servir de suite à la théorie de la combustion et de la calcination publiée en 1777” Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris année 1783 (1786): 505–538 (translated by Nicholas W. Best as “Lavoisier’s ‘Reflections on Phlogiston’ I: Against Phlogiston Theory”, Foundations of Chemistry 17 (2015): 137–151).
                          • Thorpe, 210; see also Schofield (2004), 169–94; Jackson 216–24.
                          • Schaffer, 164; Uglow, 356; McEvoy (1983), 56–57; Donovan, 175–76, 180–81.
                          • See Schaffer, 162–70 for a historiographical analysis.
                          • Schofield (2004), 194
                          •  McEvoy (1983), 51ff.
                          • McEvoy (1983), 57; see also McEvoy and MeGuire 395ff.
                          • Qtd. in Thorpe, 213.
                          • Priestley, Joseph. An History of the Corruptions of Christianity. 2 vols. Birmingham: Printed by Piercy and Jones; London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1782.
                          • Schofield (2004), 216.
                          • Qtd. in Gibbs, 249.
                          • Schofield (2004), 216–23; Thorpe, 106–08; Holt, 133–39; Philip (1985).
                          • Priestley, Joseph. The importance and extent of free inquiry in matters of religion: a sermon, preached before the congregations of the Old and New Meeting of Protestant Dissenters at Birmingham. 5 November 1785. To which are added, reflections on the present state of free inquiry in this country. Birmingham: Printed by M. Swinney; for J. Johnson, London, 1785.
                          • Qtd. in Gibbs, 173.
                          • Gibbs, 169–76; Uglow, 408.
                          • Gibbs, 176–83.
                          • Priestley, Joseph. A letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt, … on the subjects of toleration and church establishments; occasioned by his speech against the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, on Wednesday 28 March 1787. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Debrett, 1787.
                          • Priestley, Joseph. Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France, &c. Birmingham: Printed by Thomas Pearson; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                          • Schofield (2004), 269–81; Thorpe, 122–25; Uglow, 409, 435–38; Holt, 142ff; Philip (1985).
                          • Qtd. in Crossland, 294.
                          • Crossland, 283–87, 305.
                          • Kramnick, 22.
                          • Page, Anthony (2011). “Rational dissent, enlightenment and abolition of the British slave trade”. The Historical Journal. 54 (3): 748–49. doi:10.1017/S0018246X11000227. S2CID 145068908.
                          • Dionisio, Jennifer (Summer 2010). “Birmingham Toast”. Chemical Heritage Magazine. 28 (2): 18.
                          • Qtd. in Gibbs, 204; Schofield (2004), 264, 285, 289; Thorpe, 122–44; Uglow, 440–46; Jackson, 248–60; Rose, 68–88; Holt, 154ff.

                          Bibliography

                          The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

                          Secondary materials

                          • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
                          • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
                          • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
                          • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
                          • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
                          • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
                          • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
                          • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
                          • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
                          • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
                          • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
                          • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
                          • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
                          • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
                          • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
                          • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
                          • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
                          • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
                          • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
                          • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
                          • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
                          • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
                          • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
                          • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
                          • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
                          • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
                          • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
                          • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
                          • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

                          Primary materials

                          • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
                          • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
                          • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
                          • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
                          • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
                          • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

                          External links

                           
                          Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
                           
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                          Wikisource has original works by or about:
                          Joseph Priestley

                          Short online biographies

                          PRIESTLEY RIOTS

                          (also known as the Birmingham Riots of 1791) took place IN BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
                          rioters targetED religious dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Joseph Priestley

                          J PRIESTLEY BIRMINGHAM RIOTS
                          The attack on Priestley's home, Fairhill, Sparkbrook, Birmingham
                          WIKIPEDIA

                          Selected works

                          See also: List of works by Joseph Priestley

                          Library resources about
                          Joseph Priestley
                          By Joseph Priestley

                          See also

                          EARLIER RIOTS
                          FRENCH REVOLUTION
                          DISSENTERS
                          CHURCH AND KING
                          LUNAR SOCIETY
                          CARTOONS
                          phlogiston
                          Narrative of the Riots in Birmingham

                          Local and national issues stirred the passions of the rioters, from disagreements over public library book purchases, to controversies over Dissenters' attempts to gain full civil rights and their support of the French Revolution. The riots started with an attack on the Royal Hotel, Birmingham—the site of a banquet organised in sympathy with the French Revolution. Then, beginning with Priestley's church and home, the rioters attacked or burned four Dissenting chapels, twenty-seven houses, and several businesses. Many of them became intoxicated by liquor that they found while looting, or with which they were bribed to stop burning homes. A small core could not be bribed, however, and remained sober. The rioters burned not only the homes and chapels of Dissenters, but also the homes of people they associated with Dissenters, such as members of the scientific Lunar Society. While the riots were not initiated by Prime Minister William Pitt's administration, the national government was slow to respond to the Dissenters' pleas for help. Local officials seem to have been involved in the planning of the riots and were later reluctant to prosecute ringleaders. Industrialist James Watt wrote that the riots "divided [Birmingham] into two parties who hate one another mortally". Those who had been attacked gradually left, leaving Birmingham a more conservative city than previously.

                          Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774.

                          During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen).

                          Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community.

                          During the eighteenth century, as it became clear that metals gained weight after they were oxidized, phlogiston was increasingly regarded as a principle rather than a material substance.

                          By the end of the eighteenth century, for the few chemists who still used the term phlogiston, the concept was linked to hydrogen.

                          Joseph Priestley, for example, in referring to the reaction of steam on iron, while fully acknowledging that the iron gains weight after it binds with oxygen to form a calx, iron oxide, iron also loses "the basis of inflammable air (hydrogen), and this is the substance or principle, to which we give the name phlogiston".

                          Following Lavoisier's description of oxygen as the oxidizing principle (hence its name, from Ancient Greek: oksús, "sharp"; génos, "birth" referring to oxygen's supposed role in the formation of acids), Priestley described phlogiston as the alkaline principle.

                          Priestley's years in Calne were the only ones in his life dominated by scientific investigations; they were also the most scientifically fruitful. His experiments were almost entirely confined to "airs", and out of this work emerged his most important scientific texts: the six volumes of Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774–86). These experiments helped repudiate the last vestiges of the theory of four elements, which Priestley attempted to replace with his own variation of phlogiston theory. According to that 18th-century theory, the combustion or oxidation of a substance corresponded to the release of a material substance, phlogiston.

                          Priestley's work on "airs" is not easily classified. As historian of science Simon Schaffer writes, it "has been seen as a branch of physics, or chemistry, or natural philosophy, or some highly idiosyncratic version of Priestley's own invention". Furthermore, the volumes were both a scientific and a political enterprise for Priestley, in which he argues that science could destroy "undue and usurped authority" and that government has "reason to tremble even at an air pump or an electrical machine".

                          Volume I of Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air outlined several discoveries: "nitrous air" (nitric oxide, NO); "vapor of spirit of salt", later called "acid air" or "marine acid air" (anhydrous hydrochloric acid, HCl); "alkaline air" (ammonia, NH3); "diminished" or "dephlogisticated nitrous air" (nitrous oxide, N2O); and, most famously, "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen, O2) as well as experimental findings that showed plants revitalised enclosed volumes of air, a discovery that would eventually lead to the discovery of photosynthesis.

                          Priestley also developed a "nitrous air test" to determine the "goodness of air". Using a pneumatic trough, he would mix nitrous air with a test sample, over water or mercury, and measure the decrease in volume—the principle of eudiometry. After a small history of the study of airs, he explained his own experiments in an open and sincere style. As an early biographer writes, "whatever he knows or thinks he tells: doubts, perplexities, blunders are set down with the most refreshing candour." Priestley also described his cheap and easy-to-assemble experimental apparatus; his colleagues therefore believed that they could easily reproduce his experiments. Faced with inconsistent experimental results, Priestley employed phlogiston theory. This led him to conclude that there were only three types of "air": "fixed", "alkaline", and "acid". Priestley dismissed the burgeoning chemistry of his day. Instead, he focused on gases and "changes in their sensible properties", as had natural philosophers before him. He isolated carbon monoxide (CO), but apparently did not realise that it was a separate "air".

                          More details Dumourier Dining in State at St James's, on the 15th of May, 1793 by James Gillray. Published 30 March 1793 by H. Humphrey, No. 18 Old Bond Street. “One of Gillray’s finest efforts, particularly impressive in colored impressions. Priestley bearing a mitre-crowned pie, Fox carrying the steaming head of Pitt on a platter garnished with frogs, and Sheridan holding the royal crown on a salver approach a table at which is seated the tatterdemalion figure of the French General Dumourier. Dumourier’s rumored invasion of England was never to take place but the nature of the trio’s putative allegiance and of their 'treasons in embrio' are marvelously evolved.” (British Museum # 8318).

                          •  Rose, R. B. (1960). “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past & Present. 18 (18): 68–88. doi:10.1093/past/18.1.68. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 649888.
                          • Libraries, Leeds (26 July 2016). “Panic on the Streets of Birmingham: July, 1791”. The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
                          • Qtd. in Rose, 83.
                          • Rose, 70–71; Schofield, 263–64.
                          • Qtd. in Rose, 70.
                          • Rose, 70–71.
                          • Sheps, 50; Priestley, 6–12.
                          • Hutton, 158–62.
                          • Rose, 71; Sheps, 51–52; Schofield, 269–77.
                          • Schofield, 268–69.
                          • Rose, 72; Schofield, 277–83.
                          • Rose, 72; Schofield, 283.
                          • Sheps, 47–50; Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage (1966), 73–75.
                          • Rose, 70.
                          • Schofield, 266.
                          • Butler, “Introduction”, 1.
                          • Butler, “Introduction”, 3.
                          • Butler, “Introduction”, 1-4.
                          • Qtd. in Butler, “Introduction”, 1.
                          • An authentic account of the riots in Birmingham, 1.
                          • Rose, 72; Schofield, 283–84.
                          • Rose, 72–73; Sheps, 55–57; Schofield, 283–84.
                          • Rose, 73.
                          • Rose, 73; Schofield, 284–85; Maddison and Maddison, 99–100.
                          • Rose, 73; Schofield, 284–85.
                          • Rose, 83.
                          • Qtd. in Rose, 73; see also Schofield, 284–85; Maddison and Maddison, 100.
                          • “The Priestley Riots”. British Library. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
                          • Priestley, 30.
                          • Rose, 73; Schofield, 284–85; Maddison and Maddison, 101–02.
                          • Rose, 73–74.
                          • Rose, 74.
                          • Rose, 74; Schofield, 287.
                          • Hutton, 200.
                          • Rose, 74–75.
                          • Rose, 75.
                          • Rose, 75–76.
                          • Rose, 76.
                          • Rose, 76; Sheps, 46.
                          • Rose, 78–79; Schofield, 287.
                          • Rose, 79.
                          • Through Nine Reigns, 200 Years of The Shrewsbury Chronicle. 1972. p. 51. Bicentenary souvenir produced by the newspaper.
                          • Rose, 80; Schofield, 285.
                          • Rose, 81; see also Schofield, 285.
                          • Rose 81; Schofield, 285–86.
                          • Rose, 82; Schofield, 288–89.
                          • Qtd. in Rose, 82.
                          • Qtd. in Gibbs, F. W. Joseph Priestley: Adventurer in Science and Champion of Truth. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons (1965), 204.
                          • Rose, 77–78.
                          • Schofield, 289.
                          • Priestley, viii–ix.
                          • Rose, 84.

                          Bibliography

                          hackney

                          1791 – 1794

                          J PRIESTLEY BIRMINGHAM RIOTS
                          WIKIPEDIA
                          Early life and education (1733–1755)
                          • Daventry Academy
                          • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

                          Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

                          • Educator and historian
                            History of electricity
                          Leeds (1767–1773)
                          • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
                          • Religious controversialist
                          • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
                          • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
                            Calne (1773–1780)
                            • Materialist philosopher
                            • Founder of British Unitarianism
                            • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
                            • Discovery of oxygen
                              Birmingham (1780–1791)
                              • Chemical Revolution
                              • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
                              • Birmingham riots of 1791
                              Hackney (1791–1794)
                               
                              Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
                               
                              Legacy

                              Selected works

                              See also: List of works by Joseph Priestley

                              Library resources about
                              Joseph Priestley
                              By Joseph Priestley

                              See also

                              CLAPTON
                              millenarianism
                              FRANCE
                              AMERICA
                              TREASON TRIALS

                              Unable to return to Birmingham, the Priestleys eventually settled in Lower Clapton, a district in Hackney, Middlesex where he gave a series of lectures on history and natural philosophy at the Dissenting academy, the New College at Hackney. Friends helped the couple rebuild their lives, contributing money, books, and laboratory equipment. Priestley tried to obtain restitution from the government for the destruction of his Birmingham property, but he was never fully reimbursed. He also published An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham (1791), which indicted the people of Birmingham for allowing the riots to occur and for "violating the principles of English government".

                              The couple's friends urged them to leave Britain and emigrate to either France or the new United States, even though Priestley had received an appointment to preach for the Gravel Pit Meeting congregation. Priestley was minister between 1793 and 1794 and the sermons he preached there, particularly the two Fast Sermons, reflect his growing millenarianism, his belief that the end of the world was fast approaching. After comparing Biblical prophecies to recent history, Priestley concluded that the French Revolution was a harbinger of the Second Coming of Christ. Priestley's works had always had a millennial cast, but after the beginning of the French Revolution, this strain increased. He wrote to a younger friend that while he himself would not see the Second Coming, his friend "may probably live to see it ... It cannot, I think be more than twenty years [away]."

                              Daily life became more difficult for the family: Priestley was burned in effigy along with Thomas Paine; vicious political cartoons continued to be published about him; letters were sent to him from across the country, comparing him to the devil and Guy Fawkes; tradespeople feared the family's business; and Priestley's Royal Academy friends distanced themselves. As the penalties became harsher for those who spoke out against the government, Priestley examined options for removing himself and his family from England.

                              Joseph Priestley's son William was presented to the French Assembly and granted letters of naturalisation on 8 June 1792. Priestley learned about it from the Morning Chronicle. A decree of 26 August 1792 by the French National Assembly conferred French citizenship on Joseph Priestley and others who had "served the cause of liberty" by their writings. Priestley accepted French citizenship, considering it "the greatest of honours". In the French National Convention election on 5 September 1792, Joseph Priestley was elected to the French National Convention by at least two departments, (Orne and Rhône-et-Loire). He declined the honour, on the grounds that he was not fluent in French.

                              As relations between England and France worsened, a removal to France became impracticable. Following the declaration of war of February 1793, and the Aliens Bill of March 1793, which forbade correspondence or travel between England and France, William Priestley left France for America. Joseph Priestley's sons Harry and Joseph chose to leave England for America in August 1793. Finally Priestley himself followed with his wife, boarding the Sansom at Gravesend on 7 April 1794. Five weeks after Priestley left, William Pitt's administration began arresting radicals for seditious libel, resulting in the famous 1794 Treason Trials.

                              More details Dumourier Dining in State at St James's, on the 15th of May, 1793 by James Gillray. Published 30 March 1793 by H. Humphrey, No. 18 Old Bond Street. “One of Gillray’s finest efforts, particularly impressive in colored impressions. Priestley bearing a mitre-crowned pie, Fox carrying the steaming head of Pitt on a platter garnished with frogs, and Sheridan holding the royal crown on a salver approach a table at which is seated the tatterdemalion figure of the French General Dumourier. Dumourier’s rumored invasion of England was never to take place but the nature of the trio’s putative allegiance and of their 'treasons in embrio' are marvelously evolved.” (British Museum # 8318).

                              J PRIESTLEY CARTOON
                              1. “Joseph Priestley at hackney.gov.uk”. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
                              2. Schaffer, 160; Schofield (2004), 298–99; Thorpe, 145–46; Uglow, 446–49; Jackson, 300–05.
                              3. Priestley, Joseph. An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham. To which are added, strictures on a pamphlet, entitled ‘Thoughts on the late riot at Birmingham.‘ Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                              4. Qtd. in Schofield (2004), 295.
                              5. A blue plaque marks the site of the Gravel Pit Meeting at Ram Place and a brown plaque the site of the Priestleys’ house at 113, Lower Clapton Road: Joseph Priestley at hackney.gov.uk Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
                              6. Garrett, 53, 57, 61.
                              7. Qtd. in Garrett, 62.
                              8. Schofield (2004), p. 318.
                              9. Gibbs (1965), p. 214.
                              10. Gibbs (1965), p. 216; Schofield (2004), p. 318.
                              11. Graham (1995), p. 26.
                              12. Gibbs (1965), p. 216; Schofield,(2004), p. 318.
                              13. Schwartz, A. Truman; McEvoy, John G., eds. (1990). Motion toward perfection : the achievement of Joseph Priestley. Boston, Mass.: Skinner House Books. p. 199. ISBN 978-1558960107. Archived from the original on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 11 September 2014.
                              14. Graham (1995), p. 27; Schofield (2004), p. 318.
                              15. Graham (1995), p. 33.
                              16. Graham (1995), p. 35.
                              17. Gibbs, 207–22; Schofield (2004), 304–18; Thorpe, 145–55; Uglow, 446–49, 453–54; Jackson, 300–05; Holt, 177–78.

                              Bibliography

                              The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two-volume work; several older one-volume treatments exist: those of Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley’s life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley’s life in the context of other developments in science.

                              Secondary materials

                              • Anderson, R. G. W. and Christopher Lawrence. Science, Medicine and Dissent: Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). London: Wellcome Trust, 1987. ISBN 0-901805-28-9.
                              • Bowers, J. D. Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-271-02951-X.
                              • Braithwaite, Helen. Romanticism, Publishing and Dissent: Joseph Johnson and the Cause of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0-333-98394-7.
                              • Conant, J. B., ed. “The Overthrow of the Phlogiston Theory: The Chemical Revolution of 1775–1789”. Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
                              • Crook, R. E. A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley. London: Library Association, 1966.
                              • Crossland, Maurice. “The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution'”. British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 277–307.
                              • Donovan, Arthur. Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56218-X
                              • Eshet, Dan. “Rereading Priestley”. History of Science 39.2 (2001): 127–59.
                              • Fitzpatrick, Martin. “Joseph Priestley and the Cause of Universal Toleration”. The Price-Priestley Newsletter 1 (1977): 3–30.
                              • Garrett, Clarke. “Joseph Priestley, the Millennium, and the French Revolution”. Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973): 51–66.
                              • Fruton, Joseph S. Methods and Styles in the Development of Chemistry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. ISBN 0-87169-245-7.
                              • Gray, Henry Colin; Harrison, Brian Howard (2004). Joseph Priestly. Vol. XLV. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press: Oxford dictionary of national biography. pp. 351–359–.
                              • Kramnick, Isaac. “Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley’s Scientific Liberalism”. Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 1–30.
                              • Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3.
                              • Haakonssen, Knud, ed. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-56060-8.
                              • McCann, H. Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen. Norwood: Alex Publishing, 1978. ISBN 0-89391-004-X.
                              • McEvoy, John G. “Joseph Priestley, ‘Aerial Philosopher’: Metaphysics and Methodology in Priestley’s Chemical Thought, from 1762 to 1781”. Ambix 25 (1978): 1–55, 93–116, 153–75; 26 (1979): 16–30.
                              • McEvoy, John G. “Enlightenment and Dissent in Science: Joseph Priestley and the Limits of Theoretical Reasoning”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 47–68.
                              • McEvoy, John G. “Priestley Responds to Lavoisier’s Nomenclature: Language, Liberty, and Chemistry in the English Enlightenment”. Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for Chemistry. Eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Ferdinando Abbri. Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1995. ISBN 0-88135-189-X.
                              • McEvoy, John G. and J.E. McGuire. “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”. Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 325–404.
                              • McLachlan, John. Joseph Priestley Man of Science 1733–1804: An Iconography of a Great Yorkshireman. Braunton and Devon: Merlin Books, 1983. ISBN 0-86303-052-1.
                              • McLachlan, John. “Joseph Priestley and the Study of History”. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 19 (1987–90): 252–63.
                              • Philip, Mark. “Rational Religion and Political Radicalism”. Enlightenment and Dissent 4 (1985): 35–46.
                              • Rose, R. B. “The Priestley Riots of 1791”. Past and Present 18 (1960): 68–88.
                              • Rosenberg, Daniel. Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36(1) (2007): pp. 55–103.
                              • Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-46155-3.
                              • Schaffer, Simon. “Priestley Questions: An Historiographic Survey”. History of Science 22.2 (1984): 151–83.
                              • Sheps, Arthur. “Joseph Priestley’s Time Charts: The Use and Teaching of History by Rational Dissent in late Eighteenth-Century England”. Lumen 18 (1999): 135–54.
                              • Watts, R. “Joseph Priestley and Education”. Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 83–100.

                              Primary materials

                              • Lindsay, Jack, ed. Autobiography of Joseph Priestley. Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8386-7831-9.
                              • Miller, Peter N., ed. Priestley: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-42561-1.
                              • Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. New York: Collier Books, 1964.
                              • Rutt, John T., ed. Collected Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1832.
                              • Rutt, John T., ed. Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley. Two vols. London: George Smallfield, 1831.
                              • Schofield, Robert E., ed. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Selected Scientific Correspondence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

                              External links

                               
                              Wikiquote has quotations related to Joseph Priestley.
                               
                              Wikimedia Commons has media related to Joseph Priestley.
                               
                              Wikisource has original works by or about:
                              Joseph Priestley

                              Short online biographies

                              "A Word of Comfort" by William Dent (dated 22 March 1790). Priestley is preaching in front of Charles James Fox who asks "Pray, Doctor, is there such a thing as a Devil?", to which Priestley responds "No" while the devil prepares to attack Priestley from behind.

                              "The Friends of the People", Isaac Cruikshank (1764–1811), Scottish painter and caricaturist, London, 15 November 1792, hand-colored etching, published by S. W. Fores, No. 3 Piccadilly. In his time, Priestley’s scientific contributions were overshadowed by his Unitarian beliefs and somewhat radical views on reforming society. Here Joseph Priestley is seen seated at a table with Thomas Paine, radical supporter of the American and French revolutions, surrounded by incendiary items: guns, knives, a dish says phosphorous, a gun butt says “Royal Electric fluid.” A winged putto grins at them while squatting on the table. Thomas Paine sits upon kegs of gunpowder. Books on treason, murders, assassination, revolution, etc. surround them. At Priestley’s feet are packages of brimstone, axe, and pickax. On the walls are scenes of execution and assassinations.

                              PENNSYLVANIA

                              many Americans knew Priestley less as a man of science and more as a defender of the freedom of the colonies and of Dissenters

                              1794 – 1804

                              J Priestley

                              Priestley, painted late in life by Rembrandt Peale (c. 1800)

                              WIKIPEDIA
                              Early life and education (1733–1755)
                              • Daventry Academy
                              • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

                              Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

                              • Educator and historian
                                History of electricity
                              Leeds (1767–1773)
                              • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
                              • Religious controversialist
                              • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
                              • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
                                Calne (1773–1780)
                                • Materialist philosopher
                                • Founder of British Unitarianism
                                • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
                                • Discovery of oxygen
                                  Birmingham (1780–1791)
                                  • Chemical Revolution
                                  • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
                                  • Birmingham riots of 1791
                                  Hackney (1791–1794)
                                   
                                  Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
                                   
                                  Legacy
                                  NORTHUMBERLAND
                                  PHILADELPHIA
                                  UNITARIANISM
                                  JOHN ADAMS
                                  THOMAS JEFFERSON
                                  THOMAS COOPER
                                  WILLIAM COBBETT
                                  DEATH

                                  The last three years the Priestleys spent in Britain were a time of political upheaval. During the Birmingham Riots of 1791, which began on the second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in the wake of the conservative British reaction against the French Revolution, the Priestleys' home, Joseph's church, and the homes of many other religious Dissenters were burned. The Priestleys fled Birmingham and attempted to live in London, but could not escape the political turmoil.

                                  In 1794, they joined the tide of 10,000 emigrants who moved to America during the largest emigration from Europe to America until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The Priestleys left Britain at the beginning of April on the Samson, and arrived in New York City on June 4, 1794.

                                  Two of their three sons, Joseph, Jr. (eldest) and Harry (youngest), had already emigrated to the United States in August 1793, along with Joseph Priestley's friend, the radical activist Thomas Cooper. Their middle son, William, had moved to America from France, probably early in 1793, following the September massacres of the previous year.

                                  Although Europeans knew Priestley best as a scientist (he had published his paper on the discovery oxygen gas in 1774), Americans knew him best as a defender of religious freedom and as an advocate for American independence. Immediately upon his arrival, he was fêted by various political factions vying to gain his support. Priestley declined their entreaties hoping to avoid the political discord that had embroiled him in Britain. He wrote to John Adams that he "made it a rule to take no part whatever in the politics of a country in which I am a stranger, and in which I only wish to live undisturbed".

                                  He also turned down an opportunity to teach chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania at this time.

                                  Before travelling to a new home in the backwoods of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, at Point township (now the Borough of Northumberland), Priestley and his wife lodged in Philadelphia, where he gave a series of sermons which led to the founding of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.

                                  According to J. D. Bowers, who studied Priestley's influence on Unitarianism in America, "[f]or a decade Priestley served as the inspiration and leading force in the spread of Unitarianism in America and the formation of numerous societies that followed his teachings on congregational formation, the education of youth, lay preaching, and espousing one's faith in the presence of opposition from (and to) both the Protestant majority and a competing liberal faction." Through Priestley's influence, at least twelve congregations were founded in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, including the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia and Northumberland's Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Susquehanna Valley.

                                  When he preached, Unitarians and non-Unitarians flocked to hear him and his sermons were published throughout the country. During his years in America, Priestley became increasingly convinced that the Millennium was approaching. His close study of the Bible, together with the happenings in France, persuaded him that he would see Christ's return.

                                  While Priestley enjoyed preaching in Philadelphia, he could not afford the expense of living there; he also disliked the city's Quakers, whom he believed were too opulent, and feared the yellow fever epidemic that had recently decimated the city.

                                  He considered settling in Germantown, which had better access to transportation and communication than Northumberland, but his wife preferred the country and wanted to be near her sons. Priestly then debated about splitting his time between Northumberland and Philadelphia, but soon realized this plan was impractical. Determined to ensure the future economic stability of his family, he bought land and settled in Northumberland by July 1794, which was "five days of rough travel" north of Philadelphia. They both hoped that, in time, their new community would grow.

                                  SETTLING IN

                                  Priestley yearned for a more cosmopolitan community than Northumberland provided, writing to his sister that it was "seemingly almost out of the world" and complaining that he had to wait a week for news. He wrote to his friend John Vaughan: "We know but little more than we did when we left you of European affairs."

                                  During the winter of 1794-1795, Priestley wrote to friends that his situation was very "distant from my original views" and "my time here is far from passing so agreeably as it did in England", yet he was "very thankful for such an asylum" and he attempted "to make the best of my situation". In his letters to friends back in Britain, Priestley consistently referred to himself as an exile and to England as his real home.

                                  His wife was happier with the couple's situation and wrote to William Vaughan:

                                  "I am happy and thankful to meet with so sweet a situation and so peaceful a retreat as the place I now write from. Dr. Priestley also likes it and of his own choice intends to settle here, which is more than I hoped for at the time we came up...This country is very delightful, the prospects of wood and water more beautiful than I have ever seen before and the people plain and decent in their manners."

                                  Priestley's son Joseph Priestley Jr. was a leading member of a consortium that had purchased 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of virgin woodland between the forks of Loyalsock Creek. This they intended to lease or sell in 400-acre (160 ha) plots, with payment deferred to seven annual instalments, with interest. His brothers, William and Henry, bought a 284-acre (115 ha) plot of woodland which they attempted to transform into a farm, later called "Fairhill", felling and uprooting trees, and making lime to sweeten the soil by building their own lime kilns.

                                  Shortly thereafter, Thomas Cooper, a friend of Joseph Priestley's, published a pamphlet in Britain titled Some Information Respecting America, meant to encourage others to settle in Pennsylvania and offering instructions on how to do so. It detailed a clear plan for establishing and financing a settlement. The French translation, Renseignemens sur l'Amérique, was, according to one scholar, "carefully phrased in legal terminology" and "lucidly outline[d] an ambitious financial venture". However, it is unclear whether Cooper's scheme was related to the lands that the younger Priestleys had purchased.

                                  Apparently technically unrelated to either of these schemes, but influenced by Cooper's, poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, full of idealism and angered at Priestley's treatment in Birmingham, intended to emigrate to America and establish a utopian community which they called "Pantisocracy" (derived from the Greek for "equal rule of all"). They assembled twelve couples who were interested not only in demanding physical labor but also in a life of the mind, but none of them had enough money to embark on the project, which required much capital. Therefore, the poets undertook a lecture tour of England to raise funds; however, they never generated enough money and never emigrated. The utopia was not built and few immigrants arrived in Northumberland as a result of Cooper's schemes.

                                  After the failure of Cooper's endeavor, Priestley attempted to convince other friends to move to Northumberland, particularly those he had made in America, but to no avail. Priestley wrote in his Memoirs that "the settlement was given up, but being here, and my wife and myself liking the place, I have determined to take up my residence here, though subject to many disadvantages. Philadelphia was excessively expensive, and this a comparatively cheap place; and my sons, settling in the neighborhood, will be less exposed to temptation, and more likely to form habits of sobriety and industry."

                                  Last Years

                                  Priestley's attempts to avoid political controversy in the United States failed. In 1794, the journalist William Cobbett published Observations on the Emigration of Dr. Joseph Priestley, which falsely accused Priestley of stirring up rebellion in Britain, and attempted to undermine his scientific credibility. His political fortunes took an even worse turn when Cobbett obtained a set of letters sent to Priestley by the radical printer John Hurford Stone and the liberal novelist Helen Maria Williams. Cobbett published the letters in his newspaper, asserting that Priestley and his friends were fomenting a revolution. Priestley was eventually forced to defend himself in print.

                                  Family matters also made Priestley's time in America difficult. His youngest son Harry died on December 11, 1795, probably of malaria.

                                  Mary Priestley's health, already poor, deteriorated further; although William's wife, Margaret Foulke-Priestley, moved in with the couple to nurse Mary 24 hours a day.

                                  Mary Priestley died on September 17, 1796; she was already ill and never fully recovered after the shock of her son's death.

                                  On September 19 of that year Joseph wrote:

                                  "This day I bury my wife....she had taken much thought in planning the new house and now that it is far advanced and promises to be everything she wished, she is removed to another."

                                  Priestley then moved in with his elder son, Joseph Jr., and his wife Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley. [citation needed] Thomas Cooper, whose son, Thomas Jr., was living with the Priestleys, was a frequent visitor.[citation needed]

                                  Joseph Priestley Jr. left on a visit to England at Christmas 1798, not returning until August 1800. In his absence, his wife Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley and Thomas Cooper became increasing close, collaborating in numerous political essays. Priestley allowed himself to fall too heavily under Elizabeth and Cooper's influences, even helping hawk a seditious handbill Cooper had printed, around Point township, and across the Susquehanna at Sunbury. In September 1799, William Cobbett printed extracts from this handbill, asserting that: "Dr Priestley has taken great pains to circulate this address, has travelled through the country for the purpose, and is in fact the patron of it." He challenged Priestley to "clear himself of the accusation" or face prosecution." Barely a month later, in November and December 1799, Priestley stepped forward in his own defence, with his Letters to the inhabitants of Northumberland.

                                  Since his arrival in America, Priestley had continued to defend his Christian Unitarian beliefs; now, falling increasingly under the influence of Thomas Cooper and Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley, he was unable to avoid becoming embroiled in political controversy. In 1798, when, in response to the Pinckney affair, a belligerent President Adams sought to enlarge the navy and mobilise the militia into what Priestley and Cooper saw as a 'standing army', Priestley published an anonymous newspaper article: Maxims of political arithmetic, which attacked Adams, defended free trade, and advocated a form of Jeffersonian isolationism. In the same year, a small package, addressed vaguely: "Dr Priestley in America," was seized by the Royal Navy on board a neutral Danish boat. It was found to contain three letters, one of which was signed by the radical printer John Hurford Stone. These intercepted letters were published in London and copied in numerous papers in America. One of the letters was addressed to "MBP", with a note: "I inclose a note for our friend MBP—but, as ignorant of the name he bears at present among you, I must beg you to seal and address it." This gave the intercepted letters a tinge of intrigue. Fearful lest they be taken as evidence of him being a 'spy in the interest of France', Priestley sent a clumsy letter to numerous newspaper editors, in which he naively named "MBP" (Member of the British Parliament) as Mr. Benjamin Vaughan, who "like me, thought it necessary to leave England, and for some time is said to have assumed a feigned name." William Cobbett, in his Porcupine's Gazette, 20 August 1798, added that Priestley "has told us who Mr MBP is, and has confirmed me in the opinion of their both being spies in the interest of France."

                                  Priestley's son, William, now living in Philadelphia, was increasingly embarrassed by his father's actions. He confronted his father, expressing John and Benjamin Vaughan's unease, his own wife's concerns about Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley's dietary care, and his own concerns at the closeness of Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley and Thomas Cooper's relationship, and their adverse influence on Dr Priestley; but this only led to a further estrangement between William and his sister-in-law.

                                  When, a while later, Priestley's household suffered a bout of food poisoning, perhaps from milk sickness or a bacterial infection, Elizabeth Ryland-Priestley falsely accused William of having poisoned the family's flour, possibly with arsenic. Although this allegation has attracted the attention of some modern historians, it is believed to be without foundation.

                                  Priestley continued the educational projects that had always been important to him, helping to establish the "Northumberland Academy" and donating his library to the fledgling institution. He exchanged letters regarding the proper structure of a university with Thomas Jefferson, who used this advice when founding the University of Virginia. Jefferson and Priestley became close, and when the latter had completed his General History of the Christian Church, he dedicated it to President Jefferson, writing that "it is now only that I can say I see nothing to fear from the hand of power, the government under which I live being for the first time truly favourable to me."

                                  Priestley tried to continue his scientific investigations in America with the support of the American Philosophical Society, to which he had been previously elected a member in 1785. He was hampered by lack of news from Europe; unaware of the latest scientific developments, Priestley was no longer on the forefront of discovery. Although the majority of his publications focused on defending phlogiston theory, he also did some original work on spontaneous generation and dreams. Despite Priestley's reduced scientific output, his presence stimulated American interest in chemistry.

                                  By 1801, Priestley had become so ill that he could no longer write or experiment. He died on the morning of 6 February 1804, aged seventy and was buried at Riverview Cemetery in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.

                                  J Priestley
                                  Gravestone of Joseph Priestley in Riverview Cememtery in Northumberland, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, USA. Modern marker for Joesph erected in 1971 partially hides his original gravestone, gravestone for his son Henry is beside on right. Inscription reads "To / the memory of the / Rev. Dr. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY / who departed this life / on the 6th Feb. 1804 / Anno Ætatis LXXII (In the 72nd year of his age)" In smaller letters below it reads "Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the / Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. / I will lay me down in peace and sleep till / I awake in the morning of the resurrection".

                                  Priestley's epitaph reads:

                                  Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. I will lay me down in peace and sleep till I awake in the morning of the resurrection.

                                  Priestley never became a citizen of the United States.

                                   

                                  legacy

                                  By the time he died, Priestley had been made a member of every major scientific society in the Western world and had discovered numerous substances

                                  J PRIESTLEY
                                  WIKIPEDIA
                                  Early life and education (1733–1755)
                                  • Daventry Academy
                                  • Needham Market and Nantwich (1755–1761)

                                  Warrington Academy (1761–1767)

                                  • Educator and historian
                                    History of electricity
                                  Leeds (1767–1773)
                                  • Minister of Mill Hill Chapel
                                  • Religious controversialist
                                  • Defender of Dissenters and political philosopher
                                  • Natural philosopher: electricity, Optics, and carbonated water
                                    Calne (1773–1780)
                                    • Materialist philosopher
                                    • Founder of British Unitarianism
                                    • Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
                                    • Discovery of oxygen
                                      Birmingham (1780–1791)
                                      • Chemical Revolution
                                      • Defender of English Dissenters and French revolutionaries
                                      • Birmingham riots of 1791
                                      Hackney (1791–1794)
                                       
                                      Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
                                       
                                      Legacy

                                      The 19th-century French naturalist George Cuvier, in his eulogy of Priestley, praised his discoveries while at the same time lamenting his refusal to abandon phlogiston theory, calling him "the father of modern chemistry [who] never acknowledged his daughter". Priestley published more than 150 works on topics ranging from political philosophy to education to theology to natural philosophy. He led and inspired British radicals during the 1790s, paved the way for utilitarianism, and helped found Unitarianism. A wide variety of philosophers, scientists, and poets became associationists as a result of his redaction of David Hartley's Observations on Man, including Erasmus Darwin, Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, and Herbert Spencer. Immanuel Kant praised Priestley in his Critique of Pure Reason, writing that he "knew how to combine his paradoxical teaching with the interests of religion". Indeed, it was Priestley's aim to "put the most 'advanced' Enlightenment ideas into the service of a rationalized though heterodox Christianity, under the guidance of the basic principles of scientific method". Considering the extent of Priestley's influence, relatively little scholarship has been devoted to him. In the early 20th century, Priestley was most often described as a conservative and dogmatic scientist who was nevertheless a political and religious reformer. In a historiographic review essay, historian of science Simon Schaffer describes the two dominant portraits of Priestley: the first depicts him as "a playful innocent" who stumbled across his discoveries; the second portrays him as innocent as well as "warped" for not understanding their implications better. Assessing Priestley's works as a whole has been difficult for scholars because of his wide-ranging interests. His scientific discoveries have usually been divorced from his theological and metaphysical publications to make an analysis of his life and writings easier, but this approach has been challenged recently by scholars such as John McEvoy and Robert Schofield. Although early Priestley scholarship claimed that his theological and metaphysical works were "distractions" and "obstacles" to his scientific work, scholarship published in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s maintained that Priestley's works constituted a unified theory. However, as Schaffer explains, no convincing synthesis of his work has yet been expounded. More recently, in 2001, historian of science Dan Eshet has argued that efforts to create a "synoptic view" have resulted only in a rationalisation of the contradictions in Priestley's thought, because they have been "organized around philosophical categories" and have "separate[d] the producers of scientific ideas from any social conflict".

                                      J PRIESTLEY
                                      A blue plaque from the Royal Society of Chemistry commemorates Priestley at New Meeting Street, Birmingham.

                                      Priestley has been remembered by the towns in which he served as a reforming educator and minister and by the scientific organisations he influenced. Two educational institutions have been named in his honour—Priestley College in Warrington and Joseph Priestley College in Leeds (now part of Leeds City College)—and an asteroid, 5577 Priestley, discovered in 1986 by Duncan Waldron. In Birstall, the Leeds City Square, and in Birmingham, he is memorialised through statues, and plaques commemorating him have been posted in Birmingham, Calne and Warrington. The main undergraduate chemistry laboratories at the University of Leeds were refurbished as part of a £4m refurbishment plan in 2006 and renamed as the Priestley Laboratories in his honour as a prominent chemist from Leeds. In 2016 the University of Huddersfield renamed the building housing its Applied Sciences department as the Joseph Priestley Building, as part of an effort to rename all campus buildings after prominent local figures. Since 1952 Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, has presented the Priestley Award to a "distinguished scientist whose work has contributed to the welfare of humanity". Priestley's work is recognised by a National Historic Chemical Landmark designation for his discovery of oxygen, made on 1 August 1994, at the Priestley House in Northumberland, Penn., by the American Chemical Society. Similar recognition was made on 7 August 2000, at Bowood House in Wiltshire, England. The ACS also awards their highest honour, the Priestley Medal, in his name. Several of his descendants became physicians, including the noted American surgeon James Taggart Priestley II of the Mayo Clinic.

                                      ARCHIVES

                                      Papers of Joseph Priestley are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.

                                      WORKS

                                      This list classifies all of the works by Priestley. It is taken from Ronald E. Crook's A Bibliography of Joseph Priestley 1733-1804 (unless otherwise noted) and it follows very closely his generic subdivisions.

                                      All texts are by Priestley unless otherwise noted and only the first English language editions of the texts are listed below. The dash at the beginning of each entry below is a shorthand for the author's name, Joseph Priestley, consistent with standard bibliographic custom.

                                      • —. The Scripture Doctrine of Remission. London: Printed for C. Henderson; R. Griffiths; and P. A. De Hondt, 1761.
                                      • —. No Man Liveth to Himself, a Sermon preached before the Assembly of Protestant Dissenting-Ministers, of the counties of Lancaster and Chester, met at Manchester May 16, 1764… Warrington: n.p., 1764.
                                      • —. A Catechism for Children and Young Persons. London: n.p., 1767.
                                      • —. A Free Address to Protestant Dissenters on the Subject of the Lord’s Supper. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1768.
                                      • —. Considerations on Differences of Opinion among Christians. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1769.
                                      • —. A Serious Address to Masters of Families, with Forms of Family-Prayer. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1769.
                                      • —. Additions to the Address to Protestant Dissenters, on the Subject of the Lord’s Supper. London: Printed for Joseph Johnson, 1770.
                                      • —. A Familiar Illustration of Certain Passages of Scripture relating to the power of man to do the Will of God, Original Sin, Election and Reprobation, the Divinity of Christ and Atonement for Sin by the Death of Christ. Leeds, n.p., 1770.
                                      • —. Letters to the Author of Remarks on Several Late Publications Relative to the Dissenters. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1770.
                                      • —. A Free Address to Protestant Dissenters, on the Subject of Church Discipline. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1770.
                                      • —. An Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity. Leeds: n.p., 1771.
                                      • —. Letters and Queries Addressed to the Anonymous Answerer of an Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity. Leeds: Sold by J. Binns, 1771.
                                      • —. A Scripture Catechism, consisting of a Series of Questions, with References to the Scriptures. n.l: n.p., 1772.
                                      • —. Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. Vol. 1. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1772.
                                      • —. Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. Vol. 2. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1773.
                                      • —. An Address to Protestant Dissenters on Giving the Lord’s Supper to Children. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1773.
                                      • —. A Sermon Preached before the Congregation of Protestant Dissenters at Mill-Hill Chapel in Leeds, May 16, 1773 . . . On Occasion of his resigning his Pastoral Office among them. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1773.
                                      • —. Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion. Vol. 3. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1774.
                                      • —. A Letter to a Layman, on the Subject of the Rev. Mr. Lindsey’s Proposal for a Reformed English Church. London: Printed for J. Wilkie, 1774.
                                      • —. Harmony of the Evangelists, in Greek. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1777.
                                      • —. The Doctrine of Divine Influence on the Human Mind, considered, in a Sermon [on Matt. 18:3-20]. Bath: Printed by R. Cruttwell; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1779.
                                      • —. A Harmony of the Evangelists in English. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1780.
                                      • —. Two Letters to Dr. Newcome, Bishop of Waterford. On the Duration of our Saviour’s Ministry. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1780.
                                      • —. A Third Letter to Dr. Newcome, Bishop of Waterford, on the Duration of our Saviour’s Ministry. Birmingham: Printed by Piercy and Jones, for J. Johnson, London, 1781.
                                      • —. A Sermon [on John 17:19] preached December the 31st, 1780, at the New Meeting in Birmingham, on undertaking the Pastoral Office in that Place. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1781.
                                      • —. The Proper Constitution of a Christian church, considered in A Sermon [on Revelation 3:2], preached at the New Meeting in Birmingham, November 3, 1782. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, 1782.
                                      • —. Two Discourses; I. On Habitual Devotion, II. On the Duty of not living to Ourselves; Both Preached to Assemblies of Protestant Dissenting Ministers, and published at their Request. Birmingham: Printed by Piercy and Jones, for J. Johnson, London, 1782.
                                      • —. An History of the Corruptions of Christianity. Birmingham: Printed by Piercy and Jones, for J. Johnson, 1782.
                                      • —. Philisophical Solitude: or the Choice of a Rural Life, A Poem. Printed by Isaac Collins, 1782. Trenton.[note: not first edition].
                                      • —. Forms of Prayer and other Offices for the Use of Unitarian Societies. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1783.
                                      • —. A Reply to the Animadversions on the History of the Corruptions of Christianity. n.l.:, n.p., 1783.
                                      • —. A General View of the Arguments for the Unity of God; and against the Divinity and Pre-existence of Christ, from Reason, from the Scriptures, and from History. Birmingham: Printed by Piercy and Jones, for J. Johnson, London, 1783.
                                      • —. Letters to Dr. Horsley, in Answer to his Animadversions on the History of the Corruptions of Christianity. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1783.
                                      • —. Defences of the History of the Corruptions of Christianity. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1783-6.
                                      • —. Letters to Dr. Horsley, Part II. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1784.
                                      • —. The Importance and Extent of Free Inquiry in Matters of Religion: a Sermon, preached before the Congregation of the Old and New Meeting of Protestant Dissenters at Birmingham. Birmingham: Printed by M. Swinney; for J. Johnson, London, 1785.
                                      • —. Letters to Dr. Horsley, Part III. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1786.
                                      • —. An History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ . . . Proving that the Christian Religion Was at First Unitarian. Birmingham: Printed for the author, by Pearson and Rollason, and sold by J. Johnson, 1786.
                                      • —. Letters to the Jews; inviting them to an Amicable Discussion of the Evidences of Christianity. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, 1786.
                                      • —. Letters to the Jews, Part II. Birmingham: Printed for the author, by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1787.
                                      • —. Discourses on Various Subjects. Birmingham: Printed for the author, by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1787.
                                      • —. Defences of Unitarianism for the Year 1786. London: n.p., 1787–90.
                                      • —. Letters to Dr. Horne . . . to the Young Men, who are in a Course of Education for the Christian Ministry, at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Birmingham: Printed for the author by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1787.
                                      • —. Defences of Unitarianism for the Year 1787. Birmingham: Printed for the author by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1788.
                                      • —. Letters to Dr. Geddes. Birmingham: n.p., 1788.
                                      • —. A Sermon [on Luke 10:36-7] on the Subject of the Slave Trade; delivered to a Society of Protestant Dissenters, at the New Meeting, in Birmingham. Birmingham: Printed for the author by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, 1788.
                                      • —. The Conduct to be Observed by Dissenters, in Order to Procure the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, recommended in a Sermon [on 1 Cor. 7:21], preached before the Congregations of the Old and New Meetings, at Birmingham, November 5, 1789. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1789.
                                      • —. Defences of Unitarianism for the Years 1788 and 1789. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson, for J. Johnson, London, [c. 1790].
                                      • —. Familiar Letters addressed to the Inhabitants of Birmingham, in Refutation of several Charges, advanced against the Dissenters. Birmingham: Printed by F. Thompson; and sold by J. Johnson, London, 1790.
                                      • —. A View of Revealed Religion; A Sermon, preached at the Ordination of the Rev. William Field of Warwick, July 12, 1790. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1790.
                                      • —. Letters to the Rev. Edward Burn . . . in Answer to his, on the Infallibility of the Apostolic Testimony, concerning the Person of Christ. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1790. (See Edward Burn for further details.)
                                      • —. Letter to Candidates for Orders in Both Universities on Subscription to Articles of Religion. Cambridge and London: Sold by J & J. Merrill and J. Bowtell, Cambridge; D. Prince and J. Johnson, London, [1790].
                                      • —. Reflection on Death: A Sermon [on Matt. 24:26], on Occasion of the Death of the Rev. Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, Delivered at the New Meeting in Birmingham, June 13, 1790. Birmingham: Printed by J. Belcher; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1790.
                                      • —. The Evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus considered, in a Discourse first delivered in the Assembly-room at Buxton, on Sunday, September 19, 1790. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson, for J. Johnson, London, 1790.
                                      • —. The Proper Objects of Education in the Present State of the World Represented in a Discourse delivered on Wednesday, April 27, 1791. At the Meeting-House in the Old-Jewry, London; to the Supporters of the New College at Hackney. London: J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • —. A Discourse [on Luke 20:38] on Occasion of the Death of Dr. Price; delivered at Hackney, on Sunday, May 1, 1791. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • —. Letters to the Members of the New Jerusalem Church, formed by Baron Swedenborg. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                                      • —. An Address to the Methodists. Birmingham: Printed by Thomas Pearson; and sold by J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                                      • —. The Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus considered, in a Discourse . . . To which is added, an Address to the Jews. Birmingham: Printed for J. Thompson, for J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                                      • —. The Duty of Forgiveness of Injuries: A Discourse [on Luke 23:24], intended to be delivered soon after the Riots in Birmingham. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson, for J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                                      • —. A Particular Attention to the Instruction of the Young recommended, in a Discourse [on 2 Cor. 8:9], delivered at the Gravel-Pit Meeting, in Hackney, December 4, 1791, on entering on the Office of Pastor to the Congregation of Protestant Dissenters, assembling in that Place. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • —. Letters to a Young Man, occasioned by Mr. Wakefield’s Essay on Public Worship. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1792.
                                      • —. Letters to a Young Man, Part II. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1793.
                                      • —. Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France, on the Subject of Religion. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1793.
                                      • —. A Sermon [on Psalm 46:1] Preached at the Gravel-Pit Meeting in Hackney, April 19, 1793. Being the Day appointed for a General Fast. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1793.
                                      • —. A Continuation of Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France, on the Subject of Religion. Northumberland: Printed by Andrew Kennedy, 1794.
                                      • —. An Answer to Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason, being a Continuation of Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France on the Subject of Religion and of the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Northumberland: n.p., 1794.
                                      • —. The Use of Christianity, especially in Difficult Times; a Sermon [on Acts 20:32] delivered at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney, March 30, 1794, being the Author’s Farewell Discourse to his Congregation. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1794.
                                      • —. Discourses on the Evidences of Revealed Religion. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1794.
                                      • —. The Present State of Europe compared with Ancient Prophecies; A Sermon [on Matt. 3:2], preached at the Gravel Pit Meeting in Hackney, February 28, 1794, being the Day appointed for a General Fast. With a Preface, containing the Reasons for the Author’s leaving England. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1794.
                                      • —. Observations on the Increase of Infidelity. Northumberland: Printed by Andrew Kennedy, 1795.
                                      • —. Unitarianism Explained and Defended. Philadelphia: Printed by John Thompson, 1796.
                                      • —. An Address to the Unitarian Congregation at Philadelphia, delivered on Sunday, March 5, 1797. Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph Gales, 1797.
                                      • —. Discourses relating to the Evidences of Revealed Religion. Published in 3 volumes. Philadelphia: Printed by T. Dobson, 1797.
                                      • —. Letters to M. Volney, occasioned by a Work of his entitled Ruins. Philadelphia: Printed by Thomas Dobson, 1797.
                                      • —. A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with Those of the Hindoos and Other Ancient Nations. Northumberland: n.p., 1799.
                                      • —. An Inquiry into the Knowledge of the Ancient Hebrews, concerning a Future State. London: Printed for J. Johnson, by D. Levi, 1801.
                                      • —. A Letter to an Antipaedobaptist. Northumberland: Printed by Andrew Kennedy, 1802.
                                      • —. A Letter to the Reverend John Blair Linn in Defense of Socrates and Jews Compared. Northumberland: n.p. 1803.
                                      • —. A Second Letter to the Revd. John Blair Linn . . . in Reply to His Defense of the Doctrines of the Divinity of Christ and Atonement. Northumberland: Printed for P. Byrne, Philadelphia, by Andrew Kennedy, 1803.
                                      • —. Notes on All the Books of Scripture, for the Use of the Pulpit and Private Families. Northumberland: Printed for the author by Andrew Kennedy, 1803.
                                      • —. Socrates and Jesus Compared. Philadelphia: Printed by P. Byrne, 1803.
                                      • —. The Originality and Superior Excellence of the Mosaic Institutions Demonstrated. Philadelphia: Printed by Andrew Kennedy, for P. Byrne, 1803.
                                      • —. Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy, Compared with Those of Revelation. Northumberland: Printed by John Binns, 1804.
                                      • —. Index to the Bible. Philadelphia: n.p., 1804.
                                      • —. Four Discourses intended to have been delivered at Philadelphia. Northumberland: Printed by John Binns, 1806.
                                      • —. The Importance of Religion to Enlarge the Mind of Man; Considered and Illustrated in a Sermon.. Birmingham: Printed and sold by J. Belcher & Son, 1808.
                                      • —. A Sermon of behalf of the Leeds Infirmary Preached at Mill Hill Chapel [..] 1768. Leeds: Published by Richard Jackson, 1910 (first edition).

                                      This list of Priestley’s theological papers is taken from the “Selected Bibliography” in Robert Schofield’s biography of Priestley.

                                      • —. “Essay on the Harmony of the Evangelists.” Theological Repository 2 (1770): 38-59, 98-122, 230-47, 313-27.
                                      • —. “Remarks on Romans v.12-14.” Theological Repository 2 (1770): 154-58.
                                      • —. “Observations concerning Melchizadeck.” Theological Repository 2 (1770): 283-90.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Abrahamic Covenant.” Theological Repository 2 (1770): 396-411.
                                      • —. “Observations on Romans v.12 &c.” Theological Repository 2 (1770): 411-16.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Harmony of the Evangelists.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 462-69.
                                      • —. “An Essay on the Analogy there is between the Methods by which the Perfection and Happiness of Men are promoted according to the Dispensations of Natural and Revealed Religion.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 3-31.
                                      • —. “Observations on Christ’s Agony in the Garden.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 376-82.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Importance of Faith in Christ.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 239-43.
                                      • —. “Conclusion.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 477-82.
                                      • —. “Observations on Infant Baptism.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 231-39.
                                      • —. “The Socinian Hypothesis Vindicated.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 344-63.
                                      • —. “A Criticism on 1 Corinthians xv.27” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 255-56.
                                      • —. “Remarks on the Reasonings of St. Paul.” Theological Repository 3 (1771): 86-105, 188-212.
                                      • —. “Observations on Christ’s Proof of a Resurrection, from the Books of Moses.” Theological Repository 1 (2nd ed., 1773): 300-303.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Apostleship of Matthias.” Theological Repository 1 (2nd ed., 1773): 376-81.
                                      • —. “An Essay on the One Great End of the Life and Death of Christ, Intended more especially to refute the commonly received Doctrine of Atonement.” Theological Repository 1 (2nd ed., 1773): 17-45, 121-36, 195-218, 247-67, 327-53, 400-30.
                                      • —. “Introduction.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): iii-xvi.
                                      • —. “Observations on Inspiration.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 17-26.
                                      • —. “Observations relating to the Inspiration of Moses.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 27-38.
                                      • —. “Of the Island on which the Apostle Paul was shipwrecked.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 39-49.
                                      • —. “Remarks on Dr. Taylor’s Key to the Apostolic Writings.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 57-69.
                                      • —. “A Query relating to the Rise of the Arian Doctrine.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 70-72.
                                      • —. “A Conjectural Emendation of Exod. xxiii:23.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 73-74.
                                      • —. “An Addition to the Paper, signed HERMAS, relating to the Island on which Paul was shipwrecked.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 75.
                                      • —. “A Query relating to the Doctrine of Plato, concerning the Divine Essence.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 76.
                                      • —. “Of the Doctrine of Plato concerning God, and the general System of Nature.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 77-97.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Prophets of the Old Testament.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 97-122.
                                      • —. “Animadversions on the Preface to the new edition of Ben Mordecai’s Letters.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 180-86.
                                      • —. “A Proposal for correcting the English Translation of the Scriptures.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 187-88.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Inspiration of the Apostles.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 189-210.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Miraculous Conception.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 245-305.
                                      • —. “The History of the Arian Controversy.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 306-37.
                                      • —. “An Attempt to shew that Arians are not Unitarians.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 338-44.
                                      • —. “An Illustration of the Promise made to Abraham.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 361-3.
                                      • —. “A View of the Principles of the later Platonists.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 381-407.
                                      • —. “Of the Platonism of Philo.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 408-20.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Inspiration of Christ.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 433-61.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Prophecy concerning Shiloh.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 473-76.
                                      • —. “Of the Pre-existence of the Messiah.” Theological Repository 4 (1784): 477-83.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Roman Census, mentioned Luke ii.1, unfavourable to the miraculous Conception.” Theological Repository 5 (1786): 90-99.
                                      • —. “Miscellaneous Observations of the same Nature.” ‘Theological Repository 5 (1786): 100-108.
                                      • —. “A Supplement to the Illustration of the Promise made to Abraham.” Theological Repository 5 (1786): 108-10.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Prophecies of the Old Testament quoted in the New.” Theological Repository 5 (1786): 111-23.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Quotation of Isaiah, ix.1, 2. by the Evangelist Matthew.” Theological Repository 5 (1786): 123-28.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Prophecies relating to the Messiah, and the future glory of the House of David.” Theological Repository 5 (1786): 210-42, 301-16.
                                      • —. “An Attempt to prove the perpetual Obligation of the Jewish Ritual.” Theological Repository 5 (1786): 403-44.
                                      • —. “Of the Perpetuity of the Jewish Ritual.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 1-21.
                                      • —. “Difficulties in the Interpretation of some Prophecies not yet fulfilled, and Queries relating to Them.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 203-208.
                                      • —. “An Account of the Rev. John Palmer, and of some Articles intended by him for this Repository.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 217-24. Refers to the minister John Palmer, who died in 1786.
                                      • —. “Observations on Christ’s Agony in the Garden.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 302-22.
                                      • —. “Postscript to the Article signed PAMPHILUS, relating to a Case of bloody Sweat.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 347-48.
                                      • —. “A Query relating to the Origin of the low Arian Doctrine.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 376-82.
                                      • —. “Queries relating to the Religion of Indostan.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 408-14.
                                      • —. “The Observance of the Lord’s Day vindicated.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 465-83.
                                      • —. “Of the Origin of the Arian Hypothesis.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 484-90.
                                      • —. “To the Public.” Theological Repository 6 (1788): 491-93.
                                      • —. Essay on the First Principles of Government. London: Printed for J. Dodsley; T. Cadell; and J. Johnson, 1768.
                                      • —. The Present State of Liberty in Great Britain and her Colonies. London: n.p., 1769.
                                      • —. Remarks on Some Paragraphs in the Fourth Volume of Dr. Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England relating to Dissenters. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1769.
                                      • —. A View of the Principles and Conduct of the Protestant Dissenters, with respect to the Civil and Ecclesiastical Constitution of England. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1769.
                                      • —. A Free Address to Protestant Dissenters, as Such. London: Printed for G. Pearch, 1769.
                                      • —. Considerations on Church-authority. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1769.
                                      • —. An Answer to Dr. Blackstone’s Reply. Dublin: Printed for James Williams, 1770.
                                      • —. A Letter of Advice to those Dissenters who conduct the Application to Parliament for Relief from certain Penal Laws. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1773.
                                      • —. An Address to Protestant Dissenters of all Denominations on the Approaching Election of Members of Parliament, with Respect to the State of Public Liberty in General, and of American Affairs in Particular. London: Printed for Joseph Johnson, 1774.
                                      • —. A Free Address to those who have Petitioned for the Repeal of the late Act of Parliament in Favour of Roman Catholics. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1780.
                                      • —. A Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt . . . on the Subjects of Toleration and Church Establishments; Occasioned by his Speech against the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, on Wednesday the 28th of March 1787. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1787.
                                      • —. The Duty of Forgiveness of Injuries. Birmingham: Printed for J. Thompson for J. Johnson, London, 1791.
                                      • —. A Political Dialogue on the General Principles of Government. London: n.p., 1791. [Schofield questions the attribution of this to Priestley]
                                      • —. An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham. Birmingham: Printed by J. Thompson; sold by J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • —. Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Birmingham: Printed by Thomas Pearson; sold by J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • —. An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots in Birmingham, Part II. London: J. Johnson, 1792.
                                      • —. The Case of Poor Emigrants Recommended. Philadelphia: Printed by Joseph Gales; sold by W. Y. Birch, 1797.
                                      • —. Letters to the Inhabitants of Northumberland. Northumberland: n.p., 1799.
                                      • —. The Rudiments of English Grammar adapted to the Use of Schools. London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1761.
                                      • —. A Course of Lectures on the Theory of Language and Universal Grammar. Warrington: Printed by W. Eyres, 1762.
                                      • —. Considerations for the Use of Young Men and the Parents of Young Men. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1776.
                                      • —. A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1777.
                                      • —. Miscellaneous Observations Relating to Education. Bath: Printed by R. Cruttwell, for J. Johnson, 1778.
                                      • —. The Proper Objects of Education in the Present State of the World. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • —. A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Study of History. Warrington: Printed by William Eyre, 1765.
                                      • —. A Chart of Biography. London: J. Johnson, 1765.
                                      • —. A Description of a Chart of Biography. Warrington: Printed by William Eyres, 1765.
                                      • —. Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life. London: Printed for C. Henderson; T. Becket and De Hondt; and by J. Johnson and Davenport, 1765.
                                      • —. A New Chart of History. London: J. Johnson, 1769.
                                      • —. A Description of a New Chart of History. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1770.
                                      • —. Lectures on History and General Policy. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1788.
                                      • —. A General History of the Christian Church, to the Fall of the Western Empire. Birmingham: Printed by Thomas Pearson; sold by J. Johnson, 1790.
                                      • —. A General History of the Christian Church from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Present Time. Northumberland: Printed for the Author, by Andrew Kennedy, 1802.
                                      • —. A Description of a System of Biography with a Catalogue of All the Names Inserted in it and the Dates Annexed to Them. Philadelphia: Printed by Akerman & Hancock for Mathew Carey, 1803.
                                      • —. Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the Year 1795, written by himself. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1806.
                                      • —. An Examination of Dr. Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1774.
                                      • —. Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind on the Principle of the Association of Ideas, with Essays relating to the Subject of It. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1775.
                                      • —. Philosophical Empiricism. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1775.
                                      • —. Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1777.
                                      • —. The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1777.
                                      • —. A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism, and Philosophical Necessity. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1778.
                                      • —. A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Palmer, in Defence of the Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity. Bath: Printed for R. Cruttwell; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1779.
                                      • —. A Second Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Palmer London: Printed by H. Baldwin, for J. Johnson, 1780.
                                      • —. Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Bath: Printed by R. Cruttwell; sold by J. Johnson, London, 1780.
                                      • —. A Letter to Jacob Bryant Esq. in Defence of Philosophical Necessity. London: Printed by H. Baldwin, for J. Johnson, 1780.
                                      • —. Additional Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1782.
                                      • —. Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, Part II. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1787.
                                      • —. Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, Part III. Philadelphia: Printed by Thomas Dobson, 1795.
                                      • —. The History and Present State of Electricity. London: Printed for J. Dodsley, J. Johnson and B. Davenport, and T. Cadell, 1767.
                                      • —. Familiar Introduction to the Study of Electricity. London: Printed for J. Dodsley; T. Cadell; and J. Johnson, 1768.
                                      • —. A Familiar Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Perspective. London: Printed for J. Johnson and J. Payne, 1770.
                                      • —. The History and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision, Light, and Colours London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1772.
                                      • —. Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1772.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. Vol. 1. London: W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1774.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. Vol. 2. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1775.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. Vol. 3. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1777.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations relating to various Branches of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 1, [Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, Vol. 4]. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1779.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations relating to various Branches of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 2, [Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, Vol. 5]. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason, for J. Johnson, London, 1781.
                                      • —. Experiments Relating to Phlogiston. London: n.p., 1784.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations relating to various Branches of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 3, [Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, Vol.6]. Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason; sold by J. Johnson, 1786.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. In 3 volumes, being the former 6 abridged and methodized, with many additions. Birmingham, 1790.
                                      • —. Experiments on the Generation of Air from Water; to which are prefixed, Experiments relating to the Decomposition of Dephlogisticated and Inflammable Air. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1793.
                                      • —. Heads of Lectures on a Course of Experimental Philosophy, particularly including Chemistry; delivered at the New College in Hackney. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1794.
                                      • —. Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Decomposition of Water. Philadelphia: n.p., 1796.
                                      • —. Experiments and Observations relating to the Analysis of Atmospherical Air; also farther Experiments relating to the Generation of Air from Water. [Red before the American Philosophical Society, Feb.5th and 19th in 1796, and printed in their Transactions. To which are added, Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston, and the Decomposition of Water, addressed to Messrs. Berthollet &c]. London: J. Johnson, 1796.
                                      • —. Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Decomposition of Water, Part II. Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1797.
                                      • —. Doctrine of Phlogiston established and that of the Composition of Water refuted. Northumberland: Printed for the author by A. Kennedy, 1800.
                                      • —. Doctrine of Phlogiston established, with Observations on the Conversion of Iron into Steel, in a Letter to Mr. Nicholson. Printed in 1803.

                                      This list of Priestley’s scientific papers is taken from the “Selected Bibliography” in Robert Schofield’s biography of Priestley.

                                      • —. “An Account of Rings consisting of all the Prismatic Colours, made by Electrical Explosions on the Surface of Pieces of Metal.” Philosophical Transactions 58 (1768): 68-74.
                                      • —. “Experiments on the lateral Force of Electrical Explosions.” Philosophical Transactions 59 (1769): 57-62.
                                      • —. “Various Experiments on the Force of Electrical Explosions.” Philosophical Transactions 59 (1769): 63-70.
                                      • —. An Investigation of the Lateral Explosion, and of the Electricity communicated to the electrical circuit in a Discharge.” Philosophical Transactions 60 (1770): 211-27.
                                      • —. “Experiments and Observations on Charcoal.” Philosophical Transactions 60 (1770): 211-27.
                                      • —. “Experiments and Observations on Acidity, Composition of Water, and Phlogiston.” The Biographical and Imperial Magazine 3 (1770):9-10.
                                      • —. “Observations on different Kinds of Air.” Philosophical Transactions 62 (1772): 147-264.
                                      • —. “On the noxious Quality of the Effluvia of putrid Marshes.” Philosophical Transactions 64 (1774): 90-95.
                                      • —. “An Account of further Discoveries in Air.” Philosophical Transactions 65 (1775): 384-94.
                                      • —. “Observations on Respiration and the Use of the Blood.” Philosophical Transactions 66 (1776): 226-48.
                                      • —. “Experiments relating to Phlogiston, and the seeming Conversion of Water into Air.” Philosophical Transactions 73 (1783): 398-434.
                                      • —. “Experiments and Observations relating to Air and Water.” Philosophical Transactions 75 (1785): 279-309.
                                      • —. “Experiments and Observations relating to the Principle of Acidity, the Composition of Water, and Phlogiston.” Philosophical Transactions 78 (1788): 147-57.
                                      • —. “Additional Experiments and Observations relating to the Principle of Acidity, the Decomposition of Water, and Phlogiston.” Philosophical Transactions (1788): 313-30.
                                      • —. “Objections to the Experiments and Observations relating to the Principle of Acidity, the Composition of Water, and Phlogiston, considered.” Philosophical Transactions 79 (1789): 7-20.
                                      • —. “Experiments on the Phlogistication of Spirit of Nitre.” Philosophical Transactions 79 (1789): 139-49.
                                      • —. “Experiments on the Transmission of Vapour of Acids through a hot Earthen Tube, and further Observations relating to Phlogiston.” Philosophical Transactions 79 (1789): 289-99.
                                      • —. “Observations on Respiration.” Philosophical Transactions 80 (1790): 106-10.
                                      • —. “Farther Experiments relating to the Decomposition of dephlogisticated and inflammable air.” Philosophical Transactions 81 (1791): 213-22.
                                      • —. “An Interesting Letter from Dr. Priestley, concerning the principles of the New Theory of Chemistry.” Monthly Magazine 5 (1798): 159-60.
                                      • —. “A Letter to Dr. Mitchill, in reply to the proceeding [Attempt to accommodate the Dispute among Chemists concerning Phlogiston].” New York Medical Repository 1 (1798): 511-12.
                                      • —. “Experiments and Observations relating to the Analysis of Atmospherical Air.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 1-11.
                                      • —. “Further Experiments relating to the Generation of Air from Water.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 11-20.
                                      • —. “A Second Letter from Dr. Priestley to Dr. Mitchill.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 48-49.
                                      • —. “On Red precipitate of Mercury as favourable to the Doctrine of Phlogiston.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 163-65.
                                      • —. “Objections to the Antiphlogistic Doctrine of Water.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 166-67.
                                      • —. “Experiments relating to the Calces of Metals.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 263-68.
                                      • —. “Of some Experiments made with Ivory Black and also with Diamonds.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 269-71.
                                      • —. “Of the Phlogistic Theory.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 383-87.
                                      • —. “On the same Subject.” New York Medical Repository 2 (1799): 388-89.
                                      • —. “Dr. Priestley’s Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents, No. 1.” New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 116-21.
                                      • —. “Dr. Priestley’s Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents, No. 2.” New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 121-24.
                                      • —. “Dr. Priestley’s Reply to his Antiphlogistian Opponents, No. 3.” New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 124-27.
                                      • —. “Singular Effects of Gaseous Oxyd of Septon (dephlogisticated Nitrous Air).” New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 305.
                                      • —. “Priestley’s Sentiments on the Doctrines of Septon.” New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 307.
                                      • —. “Air produced, without Limitation, from Water by freezing.” New York Medical Repository 3 (1800): 422-23.
                                      • —. “Experiments on the Production of Air by the Freezing of Water.” New York Medical Repository 4 (1801): 17-21.
                                      • —. “To the Editor of the Medical Repository.” [Correcting a review of his tract on phlogiston.] New York Medical Repository 4 (1801): 103.
                                      • —. “Experiments heating Manganese in Inflammable Air.” New York Medical Repository 4 (1801): 135-37.
                                      • —. “Experiments tending to show that Azote is a compound of Hydrogen and Oxygen.” New York Medical Repository 4 (1801): 192-94.
                                      • —. “Some Observations relating to the Sense of Hearing.” New York Medical Repository 4 (1801): 247-48.
                                      • —. “Experiments on the Transmissions of Acids, and other Liquors, in the form of Vapour, over Several Substances in a hot earth tube.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 5 (1802): 1-13.
                                      • —. “Experiments relating to the Change of Place in different kinds of Air through several interposing Substances.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 5 (1802): 14-20.
                                      • —. “Experiments relating to the Absorption of Air by Water.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 5 (1802): 21-27.
                                      • —. “Miscellaneous Experiments relating to the Doctrine of Phlogiston.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 5 (1802): 28-35.
                                      • —. “Experiments on Air exposed to Heat in Metallic Tubes.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 5 (1802): 42-50.
                                      • —. “Remarks on the Work entitled ‘A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases.'” New York Medical Repository 5 (1802): 32-36.
                                      • —. “Some Thoughts concerning Dreams.” New York Medical Repository 5 (1802): 125-29.
                                      • —. “Observations and Experiments relating to the Pile of Volta.” New York Medical Repository 5 (1802): 153-59.
                                      • —. “Miscellaneous Observations relating to the Doctrine of Air.” New York Medical Repository 5 (1802): 264-67.
                                      • —. “A Reply to Mr. Cruickshank’s Observations in Defence of the New System of Chemistry.” New York Medical Repository 5 (1802): 390-92.
                                      • —. “Additional Remarks on the Same.” New York Medical Repository 5 (1802): 393.
                                      • —. “On the Theory of Chemistry.” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts 2 (1802): 69-70.
                                      • —. “A Letter to the Editor.” Monthly Magazine 14 (1802): 2-3.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Conversion of Iron into Steel.” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts 2 (1802): 223-34.
                                      • —. “Additional Remarks on Mr. Cruickshank’s Experiments on Finery Cinder and Charcoal.” New York Medical Repository 6 (1803): 271-73.
                                      • —. “On Air from Finery cinder and Charcoal with other Remarks on the Experiments and Observations of Mr. Cruickshank.” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts 3 (1803): 65-69.
                                      • —. “Answer to the Observations of Mr. William Cruickshank upon the Doctrine of Phlogiston.” Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts 3 (1803): 65-69.
                                      • —. “Observations and Experiments relating to equivocal, or spontaneous Generation.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 6 (1809): 119-29.
                                      • —. “Observations on the Discovery of Nitre, in common Salt, which had been frequently mixed with Snow.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 6 (1809): 129-32.

                                      The following items are Scientific Papers not included in the above list:

                                      This list of Priestley’s edited works is taken from the “Selected Bibliography” in Robert Schofield’s biography of Priestley.

                                      • Ellwall. Edward. The Triumph of Truth. 2nd ed. Leeds: J. Binns, 1771.
                                      • An Account of a Society for Encouraging the Industrious Poor. Birmingham: Pearson and Rollason, 1787. [Priestley wrote the Preface]
                                      • An History of the Suffering of Mr. Lewis de Marolles, and Mr. Isaac LeFevre, upon the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz. Birmingham: for J. Johnson, 1788.
                                      • The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments; also the Apocrypha; translated out of the Original Tongues, with Annotations. Birmingham: Pearson and Rollason, 1778-79.
                                      • Original Letters by the Rev. John Wesley and his Friends. Birmingham: for J. Johnson, 1791.
                                      • Collins, Anthony. A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty, Republished with a Preface by Joseph Priestley. n.l.: n.p., 1790.
                                      • Hawkes, William and Joseph Priestley. Psalms and Hymns for the Use of the New Meeting in Birmingham. Birmingham: J. Thompson, 1790.
                                      • The Theological Repository. Birmingham: for J. Johnson, 1773-78. [Periodical]
                                      • —. The Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley. Ed. John Towill Rutt. London: 1817-31. Reprinted in 1972.
                                      • —. Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley Ed. Henry Carrington Bolton. New York: Privately printed, 1892.
                                      • —. A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley: Selected Scientific Correspondence. Ed. Robert E. Schofield. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966.

                                       

                                      Library resources about
                                      List of works by Joseph Priestley
                                      By List of works by Joseph Priestley

                                      Theological and religious works:

                                      Political and social works:

                                      Educational works:

                                      Philosophical and metaphysical works:

                                      Historical works:

                                      Scientific works:

                                      Selected collected works:

                                      • —. Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley, Philadelphia: Collins Printing House, 1892.
                                      • Dixon, Ronald A. Martineau, “Some letters of the Reverend Dr. Joseph Priestley, F. R. S.”, J. Chem. Educ., March, 1933, 10 (3), p 149.

                                      I am backdating this a year to test it in a phlogiston themed notes.