While a student, George Poulett Scrope (1797–1876) visited Vesuvius and Etna and developed a passionate enthusiasm for volcanos. He did pioneering fieldwork in France in 1821, witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius in 1822, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826. Scrope became increasingly involved in economics and politics, but later in his career published revised versions of two pioneering books on volcanism he had originally published in the 1820s. Volcanos (1862), reissued here, was based on his Considerations on Volcanos (1825, also reissued in this series) and dedicated to his life-long friend and colleague Charles Lyell. This influential work on volcanic phenomena includes a substantial catalogue of 'all known volcanos and volcanic formations' as well as a dramatic illustration of Vesuvius. It was translated into French and German, went into a second English edition in 1872, and was one of the foundational texts of volcanology.
George Poulett Scrope (1797–1876) was a British geologist who studied at Cambridge, where his teachers included Adam Sedgwick, and who became a close colleague of Charles Lyell. As an undergraduate he developed a lifelong fascination with volcanos, inspired by visits to Vesuvius and Etna. After graduating in 1821 he spent six months exploring extinct volcanos of the Massif Central in France, and he returned to Naples to witness the 1822 eruption of Vesuvius. In 1825 he published Considerations on Volcanos (also reissued in this series), and in 1826 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His pioneering work on France was originally published in 1827 as Memoir on the Geology of Central France and later revised for the 1858 edition reissued here. It contains detailed descriptions and illustrations of volcanos, and argues that the concept of geological time is important for the understanding of mineralogy and volcanism.
George Julius Poulett Scrope (1797–1876) published Considerations on Volcanos in 1825. The work contains the results of his observations of volcanos in the volcanic regions of central France, Italy and Germany. It includes scientific descriptions of all volcanos in these areas, with each categorised according to its level of activity, main characteristics and geological history. Scope's work was one of the first attempts at a comprehensive theory of volcanic action and an understanding of the significance of volcanos as evidence for the earth's history. Scrope argued that volcanos should be studied in terms of known geological processes, and that 'non-catastrophic' causes should be considered to explain their formation. He argued that a gradual cooling of the earth was key to the formation of volcanos. This is a major work of nineteenth-century geology that sets out many of the principles still followed in vulcanology.
