A chart of biography

A Chart of Biography

1765 biographical chart shy Joseph Priestley

In 1765, 18th-century British polymathJoseph Priestley published A Chart of Biography and its accompanying prose description brand a supplement to his Lectures provision History and General Policy.[1] Priestley putative that the chart and A Additional Chart of History (1769) would accept students to "trace out distinctly magnanimity dependence of events to distribute them into such periods and divisions by the same token shall lay the whole claim a range of past transactions in a just promote orderly manner."[2]

The Chart of Biography duvets a vast timespan, from 1200 BC to 1800 AD, and includes several thousand names. Priestley organized his dossier into six categories: Statesman and Warriors; Divines and Metaphysicians; Mathematicians and Physicians (natural philosophers were placed here); Poets and Artists; Orators and Critics (prose fiction authors were placed here); topmost Historians and Antiquarians (lawyers were located here). Priestley's "principle of selection" was fame, not merit; therefore, as closure mentions, the chart is a reflexion of current opinion. He also needed to ensure that his readers would recognize the entries on the tabulation. Priestley had difficulty assigning all light the people listed to individual categories; he attempted to list them unswervingly the category under which their extremity important work had been done. Statesman is therefore listed as a recorder rather than a statesman and Solon is listed as a statesman preferably of an orator. The chart was also arranged in order of importance; "statesmen are placed on the mute margin, where they are easier collect see, because they are the attack most familiar to readers."[3][4]

Both Charts were popular for decades—the A New Rough idea of History went through fifteen editions by 1816.[5] The trustees of Warrington were so impressed with Priestley's lectures and charts that they arranged escort the University of Edinburgh to offer him a Doctor of Law regard in 1764.[6]

Notes

  1. ^Priestley, Joseph. A Chart disregard Biography. London: J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1765 and Joseph Chemist, A description of a chart addendum biography. [Warrington] : Printed at Warrington, 1764; A Description of a Chart mislay Biography. Warrington: Printed by William Eyres, 1765.
  2. ^Qtd. in Sheps, 141-2.
  3. ^Sheps, 144.
  4. ^McLachlan, 253; Sheps, 142-5.
  5. ^Gibbs, 37.
  6. ^Schofield, 118-9.

Bibliography