An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study Annotation

Line 2: The New Chart of History, which charted significant empires and countries in world history (McCarthy and Kraft 73).

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Line 4: Priestley owned a Chart of Biography, which listed significant people in history (McCarthy 73).

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Line 8: McCarthy and Kraft suggest that Barbauld might be implying that “Priestley is for hanging the monarchy” (73). Given Priestley’s dissenting views, this interpretation is entirely possible, and the reader can assume, at the very least, that Barbauld implies that Priestley takes the monarchy lightly.

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Line 9: The Church Fathers (McCarthy 73).

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Line 13: McCarthy and Kraft note that Priestley often took quotations from the works of Juvenal (73). Juvenal was a Roman satirist known for his biting, sharp commentary.

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Line 17: The Leyden jar was used to store electricity. A nail partly submerged in water inside a glass jar was charged by rubbing a wire protruding from the jar. The charge was released by touching the wire (Encyclopedia Britannica).

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Line 29: Olio: “Any mixture of many heterogeneous elements; a hotchpotch, medley, jumble” (OED 2a).

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Line 35: McCarthy and Kraft suggest that Bowling is the name of a printer (74).

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Line 58: McCarthy and Kraft speculate that this is a reference to Priestley’s experiments with air and flammable gases (75).

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