Boydell & Brewer has just published Clare Brant’s Balloon Madness: Flights of Imagination in Britain, 1783-1786.

It presents an absorbing account of the long-lasting impact of the short-lived balloon craze, when it must have seemed that a whole new future had arrived fully-formed. Although the deficiencies of balloons would eclipse the initial thrill of flight, the adventures and ambitions of the aeronauts and their balloons, and the sheer potential that they presented, gripped the nation.

Professor Brant documents the impact on journalism, literature, art and design, on concepts of national boundaries and the power of science, and even on petty crime (pickpockets flocked to work enraptured audiences whose attention was firmly fixed skyward). What did ballooning mean at the time and what did it quickly come to mean soon after?

A full description may be found at https://boydellandbrewer.com/balloon-madness-hb.html