Jane Marcet (/ˈmɑːrsɛt/; née Haldimand; 1 January 1769 – 28 June 1858) was an English salonnière of Republic of Geneva descent,[1] and an innovative writer of popular, explanatory science books.

Her studies included Latin (essential for the sciences), chemistry, biology and history, as well as topics more usual for young ladies in England.

[3] She developed an early interest in painting during a visit to Italy with her father in 1796, and studied with Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence.

[6] She was married in 1799 to Alexander John Gaspard Marcet (1770–1822), a political exile from Geneva, Switzerland who graduated from medical school at the University of Edinburgh as a physician in 1797.

[7] When Jane became interested in learning more about chemistry, they conducted experiments together in a home laboratory, discussing the scientific principles involved.

[3][6] The Marcets belonged in a literary and scientific social circle of leading writers and scientists, such as Mary Somerville,[7] Henry Hallam, Harriet Martineau, Auguste Arthur de la Rive and Maria Edgeworth.

When her father died in 1817, she received a substantial legacy that enabled Alexander Marcet to give up his medical practice and devote himself to chemistry full-time.

In her prefaces, Marcet addresses whether such knowledge is suitable for women, arguing against objections and stating that public opinion supports her view.

It covered the basics of scientific knowledge of the time: physics, mechanics, astronomy, the properties of fluids, air and optics.

This was well received and widely read, though some later economists such as Alfred Marshall were dismissive, to the detriment of its later reputation, and Joseph Schumpeter derided it as "economics for schoolgirls.

She went through one of several periods of depression that affected her life, described by her friend Auguste de La Rive as a "shadow enveloping an energetic and active spirit.

By writing in discursive English, she made scientific knowledge accessible not only to women, but to men not trained in the fundamental languages of a classical education, Latin and Greek.

While her original intent was to educate women, she reached a broader audience in line with enlightenment ideals, and laid claim to the natural sciences as a public endeavour.

When Henry James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1898, one of his characters, the governess, refers offhandedly to a text being "as impersonal as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine."

[7] Its popularity even in the early 1900s suggests increasing acceptance by American schools to including basic subjects of theoretical and experimental science in the education of females.

Mary Somerville, born in 1790, the mathematician after whom The University of Oxford's first women's college was named, said of Marcet: “No one at this time can duly estimate the importance of Mrs Marcet’s scientific works.”[7] The book remained popular in the United States partly through the publishing of nearly two dozen derivative editions by John Lee Comstock and others.

It also embraced general notions of political economy with the distribution of property, taxes, the division of labour, on capital, and on the wages, population and social predicament of the poor.

[14] In a letter to Pierre Prevost, Marcet stated, "I can assure you that the greatest pleasure I derive from success is the hope of doing good by the propagation of useful truths amongst a class of people, who, excepting in a popular familiar form, would never have become acquainted with them.

Marcet's Conversations on Political Economy inspired Harriet Martineau, a British social theorist and Whig writer often cited as the first female sociologist, to introduce economic topics into her writings.

[19] She was inspired to teach the principles of economics not by pressing them into a story, but by displaying their natural workings in selected phases of life.

She wrote to Michael Faraday in 1845, an esteemed writer and a member of the prestigious Royal Society, for detailed and expanded information on his research.

[20] Willie Henderson tried to frame Jane as an educational broker, arguing that to change the perspectives of others' minds was "mere capitalist propaganda" for "sophisticated curriculum development".

It conveyed a message and made the public aware of the ideas of professionals, who in turn were provided with new challenges by her facilitation of two-way communication.

She brought a deep perception of classical economics to bear on social questions by counterposing the "prejudices and popular feeling of uninformed benevolence".

[20] Furthermore, she introduced the insights of continental thinkers into the writings of the English classical school, so challenging them to decide what was peripheral and what central to the story.

While teaching wisdom through professionals to the untaught public, she also built up the networks that focused on her direct engagement to transmit the conversation to the people.

It had a strong impact on young writers and popularisers like Harriet Martineau, Jean-Baptiste Say, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, on great political economists such as Malthus, JS Mill and many more, and on politicians and bankers with whom she had social ties.