Abstract
Historians have commonly described John Evelyn's pamphlet about London smoke pollution, Fumifugium, as a precocious example of environmental concern. This paper argues that
such an interpretation is too simple. Evelyn's proposals are shown to be closely related to political
allegory and the panegyrics written to welcome the newly restored Charles II. However, the paper also
shows that Fumifugium was not simply a literary conceit; rather it exemplified the mid-seventeenth-century
English interest in the properties of air that is visible in both the Hartlib circle and the early
Royal Society
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 535-551 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | The Historical Journal |
Volume | 38 |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published - Sept 1995 |