Erasmus Robert Darwin was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor, and poet.
Erasmus Darwin c. 1792–1793, oil painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Darwin's House in Lichfield, now a museum dedicated to his life and work.
Portrait of Erasmus Darwin, 1770, by Joseph Wright of Derby.
Erasmus Darwin's coat of arms. Escutcheon: Argent, on a bend Gules cottised Vert, three escallop shells, Or. Crest: A demi-griffin segreant, Vert, holding in his claws an escallop, Or. Motto: E conchis omnia (All things out of conches/molluscs).
The Midlands Enlightenment, also known as the West Midlands Enlightenment or the Birmingham Enlightenment, was a scientific, economic, political, cultural and legal manifestation of the Age of Enlightenment that developed in Birmingham and the wider English Midlands during the second half of the eighteenth century.
A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in place of the Sun, by Joseph Wright of Derby