James Sheridan Muspratt was born in Dublin, Ireland on March 8, 1821, the son of a prosperous manufacturer. He was named after the dramatist Sheridan Knowles (his younger brother’s middle name was Knowles) and he was later to marry a well known actress, Susan Cushman. Later he became well acquainted with Charles Dickens, William Charles Macready, and many other literary and theatrical luminaries. Like his two brothers he worked first with Justus von Liebig in Giessen and later with August von Hofmann. In 1841 Muspratt founded the Liverpool College of Chemistry which was modeled on Hofmann’s innovative Royal College of Chemistry in London. Later he was sent to America to learn business and to study its burgeoning chemical industry. He was a prolific author and it is for his 1857-60 two-volume Chemistry, Theoretical, Practical and Analytical as applied and relating to the Arts and Manufactures that he is today chiefly remembered. This was the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of its day and it is significant that though there was only one edition in English, expanded versions were to appear in Germany. In front of each volume of his magnum opus Muspratt inserted many beautiful steel engravings of famous (and some now forgotten) chemists, and it is a selection of these that make up this 1998 calendar. He died in Liverpool in February or March (authorities differ) of 1871.

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