Mauve (eBook)

Mauve is the beguiling story of a man who invented a colour, and in the process transformed the world around him. Before 1856, artificial colour was derived with difficulty and at enormous expense from animals, minerals or plants. But in 1856 a chemist called William Perkin found a way of making colour from coal. Perkin found mauve by chance, at the age of 18, working on a treatment for malaria. Instead of artificial quinine he produced a dark oily sludge that, much to his surprise, turned silk a beautiful light purple. The colour was unique. It not only stormed the fashion houses of Paris and London, it earned Perkin a fortune and generated huge industries in the new science of applied chemistry. Perkin's astonishing discovery, engagingly told in Mauve, had fundamental effects on the development of explosives, perfume, photography and modern medicine - effects that colour everything we see today.

Simon Garfield was born in 1960. He is the author of Expensive Habits: The Dark Side of the Industry, The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of AIDS, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, The Wrestling, The Nation's Favourite: The True Adventures of Radio 1, Mauve, The Last Journey of William Huskisson, The Error World and the Mass Observation trilogy Our Hidden Lives, Private Battles and We Are At War. Mini: the True and Secret History of the Making of a Motor Car was published in 2009., Simon Garfield was born in London in 1960. He is the author of an appealingly diverse and unpredictable canon of non-fiction, including the bestsellers Mauve, Just My Type and On The Map. He is a trustee of Mass Observation, and is the editor of several books of diaries from the archive, including Our Hidden Lives and A Notable Woman. His study of AIDS in Britain, The End of Innocence, won the Somerset Maugham Prize, while To The Letter was one of the inspirations for the theatre shows Letters Live. His most recent book is Dog's Best Friend: A Brief History of an Unbreakable Bond.

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Mauve is the beguiling story of a man who invented a colour, and in the process transformed the world around him. Before 1856, artificial colour was derived with difficulty and at enormous expense from animals, minerals or plants. But in 1856 a chemist called William Perkin found a way of making colour from coal. Perkin found mauve by chance, at the age of 18, working on a treatment for malaria. Instead of artificial quinine he produced a dark oily sludge that, much to his surprise, turned silk a beautiful light purple. The colour was unique. It not only stormed the fashion houses of Paris and London, it earned Perkin a fortune and generated huge industries in the new science of applied chemistry. Perkin's astonishing discovery, engagingly told in Mauve, had fundamental effects on the development of explosives, perfume, photography and modern medicine - effects that colour everything we see today.