William Harvey’s Revolutionary Idea

Circulation

Winner of the Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2012, this is the vivid and visceral biography of William Harvey, the Renaissance anatomist who discovered the circulation of the blood.

A book that combines scholarly science with narrative excitement to spectacular effect

Thomas Wright's book opens brilliantly and bloodily  and continues in the same vein...a captivating intellectually gripping journey into our country's scientific past

In Circulation, Wright tells a good story, warts and all

The little man of 'perpetual movement' has found a fine advocate in Thomas Wright, whose highly readable Circulation combines recent scholarship with more than a touch of drama

Thomas Wright's lucid biography...deftly puts Harvey into his cultural context

As soon as I started this book, I was gripped with curiosity

Thomas Wright's lively little book on Harvey's revolutionary idea is a panegyric to the man's whirring mind, and to the excitements of thinking more generally

Excellent and often bloodthirsty... A highly readable account of a great Englishman

A vivid biography of William Harvey, which reveals his complex character

It’s a pretty gruesome story – told very well here by Thomas Wright

An engaging and lively account of an endlessly curious man

Thomas Wright was educated at Saint Thomas More RC School, Bedford, and Magdalen College, Oxford. His groundbreaking Oscar's Books (Chatto &amp; Windus, 2008), a portrait of his hero Oscar Wilde though his reading, was hailed by Craig Brown as 'an original and eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography'. His play, Death in Genoa, was recently produced in London and broadcast on website of The Independent. He lives in Oxford.

“What I am really anxious to hear is the final cause of your monstrous fiction. For your false invention seems to have no purpose. What reason can you give me for the circulation of the blood?” 
 
William Harvey’s theory of circulation was as controversial in its day as Copernicus’ idea that the earth revolved around the sun. Unleashing intellectual anarchy, derailing established ideas, &amp; gaining currency far beyond the walls of the College of Physicians, Harvey’s revolutionary theory went on to permeate the culture and language of 17th century England. 
 
Circulation charts the remarkable rise of the yeoman’s son who demolished beliefs held by anatomists since Roman times, going on to become arguably the greatest Englishman in the history of science after Darwin &amp; Newton.

Thomas Wright

Entertaining and highly original, Oscar's Books is animated by a real intellectual passion. It should be read by anyone interested in Wilde or in the art of literary biography

Wholly original book about reading, its comforts and its perils, an eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography

The premise of the book is gorgeous...the book is both thorough and intriguing

No other scholar of Wilde has succeeded so well in moving into Oscar's head

A remarkable new biography...the result is an original and compelling book

Intriguing...he has written an indispensible guide

Wright's account of Wilde's life is fun and thorough...behind Wright's light touch lies a thoughtful, illuminating book

A charmingly eccentric attempt to tell Wilde's story through his reading

This arresting book on Oscar Wilde has much to commend it

An original version of one of history's great writers and book-lovers

An enthralling biography of Wilde the reader

In suitably lyrical language, Wright presents a portrait of this artist painted with the extensive palette of European literature - a colourful, sensitive and lavish image with which any bibliophile could empathise

A Journey Around the Library of Oscar Wilde

For Wilde, as for many people, reading could be as powerful and transformative an experience as falling in love. He devoured books, talked books, luxuriated in books and lavished books on his friends- they played, too, a vital part in his seductions of young men. 
 
Oscar's Books tells the story of Wilde's life through his reading, from his childhood in Dublin, where he was nurtured on Celtic myth, Romantic poetry and Irish folklore; through his undergraduate years in which he built his intellect out of books; to prison, where his friends supplied him with literature which saved his sanity; to his final years in Paris where he consoled himself with old favourites such as Flaubert and Balzac. 
 
Fresh, utterly engaging and wholly original, Oscar's Books is an entirely new kind of biography.

Thomas Wright

Praise for Oscar's Books

**Entertaining and highly original, Oscar's Books is animated by a real intellectual passion. It should be read by anyone interested in Wilde or in the art of literary biography**

Wholly original book about reading, its comforts and its perils, an eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography

The premise of the book is gorgeous...the book is both thorough and intriguing

**Entertaining and highly original, Oscar's Books is animated by a real intellectual passion. It should be read by anyone interested in Wilde or in the art of literary biography**

Wholly original book about reading, its comforts and its perils, an eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography

The premise of the book is gorgeous...the book is both thorough and intriguing

**Entertaining and highly original, Oscar's Books is animated by a real intellectual passion. It should be read by anyone interested in Wilde or in the art of literary biography**

Wholly original book about reading, its comforts and its perils, an eccentric landmark in the art of literary biography

The premise of the book is gorgeous...the book is both thorough and intriguing

Books by Thomas Wright

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter