Marcet, JANE

Marcet, JANE, known as MRS MARCET, the author of a very popular elementary introduction to chemistry entitled Conversations on Chemistry, through which Faraday made his first acquaintance with the subject. She was the daughter of a rich London merchant, a Swiss by birth, and was herself born at Geneva in 1769. She married Alexander Marcet, a Genevan, who settled in London as a doctor in the last years of the 18th century, and later in life devoted himself to experimental chemistry. Besides the book on chemistry, which reached the 16th ed. in 1853, she wrote Conversations on Political Economy (1816; 7th ed. 1839), which was warmly praised by J. B. Say, by McCulloch, and by Lord Macaulay; Conversations on Natural Philosophy (1819; 13th ed. 1858), and similar books on Botany (9th ed. 1840), Vegetable Physiology, &c., besides numerous charming Stories for very Little Children, in the estimation of many her best work. She died in London on 28th June 1858. See Harriet Martineau's Biographical Sketches (1869).