David Levy has held a lifelong passion for comets, and is one of the most successful comet discoverers in history. In this book he describes the observing techniques that have been developed over the years--from visual observations and searching, to photography, through to electronic charge-coupled devices (CCDs). He combines the history of comet hunting with the latest techniques, showing how our understanding of comets has evolved over time. This practical handbook is suitable for amateur astronomers, from those who are casually interested in comets and how to observe them, to those who want to begin and expand an observing program of their own. Drawing widely from his own extensive experience, Levy describes how enthusiastic amateurs can observe comets and try to make new discoveries themselves. David H. Levy is one of the word's foremost amateur astronomers. He has discovered seventeen comets, seven using a telescope in his own backyard, and had a minor planet, Asteroid 3673 Levy named in his honor. He is best known as the co-discoverer of the famous 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet. Levy is frequently interviewed in the media and succeeded Carl Sagan as science columnist for Parade magazine. He has written and contributed to a number of books, most recently David Levy's Guide to the Night Sky (Cambridge, 2001).

Since the seventeenth century our ideas of scientific authorship have expanded and changed dramatically. In this ambitious volume of new work, Mario Biagioli and Peter Galison have brought together historians of science, literary historians, and historians of the book. Together they track the changing nature and identity of the author in science, both historically and conceptually, from the emergence of scientific academies in the age of Galileo to concerns with large-scale multiauthorship and intellectual property rights in the age of cloning labs and pharmaceutical giants. How, for example, do we decide whether a chemical compound is discovered or invented? What does it mean to patent genetic material? Documenting the emergence of authorship in the late medieval period, authorship's limits and its fragmentation, Scientific Authorship offers a collective history of a complex relationship.

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing1660-1789 features coverage of the lives and works of almost 500 notable writers based in the British Isles from the return of the British monarchy in 1660 until the French Revolution of 1789. Broad coverage of writers and texts presents a new picture of 18th-century British authorship Takes advantage of newly expanded eighteenth-century canon to include significantly more women writers and labouring-class writers than have traditionally been studied Draws on the latest scholarship to more accurately reflect the literary achievements of the long eighteenth century

What does it mean to hear scientifically? What does it mean to see musically? This volume uncovers a new side to the long nineteenth century in London, a hidden history in which virtuosic musical entertainment and scientific discovery intersected in remarkable ways. Sound Knowledge examines how scientific truth was accrued by means of visual and aural experience, and, in turn, how musical knowledge was located in relation to empirical scientific practice. James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart gather work by leading scholars to explore a crucial sixty-year period, beginning with Charles Burney’s ambitious General History of Music, a four-volume study of music around the globe, and extending to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where musical instruments were assembled alongside the technologies of science and industry in the immense glass-encased collections of the Crystal Palace. Importantly, as the contributions show, both the power of science and the power of music relied on performance, spectacle, and experiment. Ultimately, this volume sets the stage for a new picture of modern disciplinarity, shining light on an era before the division of aural and visual knowledge.

Stewart J. Cooke teaches English at Dawson College --Book Jacket.

Volume One is the first of a projected twelve-volume edition of Burney's early journals and letters and covers the years 1768-73. This edition reproduces her earliest journals in their original form, replacing omitted and altered passages. It shows her development as an artist and contains typically vivid sketches of her family, friends, and acquaintances in London and the country. Further volumes will cover the so-called "Streatham Years" (1778-86, 4 vols.) and "Court Years" (1786-91, 6 vols.). These will carry her through the period of her greatest fame as the author of the novels Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782), and will end with her exit from the Court of King George III and Queen Charlotte after five exhausting years of service to the Queen as Second Keeper of the Robes. Eighteenth-century scholars generally regard Fanny's early journals as her freshest and most appealing. This edition complements Joyce Hemlow's Oxford edition of Burney's letters and journals from 1791 to 1840 (12 vols., Oxford, 1972-84). While the early journals have been printed before, Lars Troide's edition will provide the first full text of Fanny's early journals, accompanied by thorough and accurate annotations which fully explicate the context in which the journals were written.