Originally apprenticed to a bookbinder, Michael Faraday (1791–1867) began to attend Sir Humphrey Davy's chemistry lectures purely out of interest. Although he soon recognised that science would be his vocation, there was no defined career path to follow, and when he applied to Davy for work he was gently told to 'attend to the bookbinding'. It was only after a laboratory explosion in which Davy partially lost his sight that Faraday was taken on as his amanuensis. From this difficult beginning stemmed perhaps the most famous scientific career of the nineteenth century. This three-volume collection of Faraday's papers provides a comprehensive record of a key branch of his work. Volume 2, first published in 1844, includes essays on the illusions caused by lightning, the chemistry of a voltaic pile, and his defence against accusations that the idea behind his electromagnetic motor was stolen from another physicist.