Lunar Lecture - ‘Anna Seward and the invention of pollution in the eighteenth-century West Midlands’

The poet, Anna Seward (1742-1809), lived in Lichfield, had a close friendship with Erasmus Darwin, and knew other members of the Lunar Society. She travelled widely across the West Midlands, and one result was the poem, ‘Colebrookdale’, written in fact in two versions, which provides an insight into environmental and atmospheric pollution at a time when industrial activity was generally perceived by Seward’s acquaintances as something which brought benefits to all. Seward’s poetry though focused on the industrial town of Coalbrookdale in the Severn Valley, ranges across the urban geography of the West Midlands and uses the word pollution in the environmental sense that we apply it today. Her vision provides an early expression of anti-industrial sentiment, which became widespread later in the nineteenth century in the writings of John Ruskin and others. This talk analyses Sewards observations and places them in the context of her time. Dr Malcolm Dick OBE, FRHistS is a trustee of Erasmus Darwin House and Honorary Associate Professor in History at the University of Birmingham. He was formerly Director of the Centre for West Midlands History at the University and has written about the individual Lunar Men and the history of Birmingham and the Black Country. He has contributed to two websites on West Midlands history: Revolutionary Players https://www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk/ and History West Midlands https://historywm.com/