JOSIAH Wedgwood overcame poverty, physical handicap and intense competition to become one of the UK’s foremost industrialists, as well as one of its wealthiest.
Wedgewood owed his success to the lucky coincidence of good-quality clay, coal and a tradition of pottery making around Stoke-on-Trent in northern England, plus 18th-century nonconformism and an interest in scientific experiment and commerce, allied with talent, ambition and necessity.
Brian Dolan’s Josiah Wedgwood: Entrepreneur to the Enlightenment relates the remarkable story of an individual’s life and the cultural environment that shaped it. Written by American historian of science, Dolan, this biography affords an engaging,…
