In James Cowles Prichard of the Red Lodge Margaret M. Crump offers the first in-depth biography of the early Victorian British scientist James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848). An intellectual giant in the developing human sciences, he was a pioneering psychiatric theorist in the formative years of the discipline and one of Europe’s leading anthropologists. With evocative detail, Crump draws readers into the social and cultural milieu of early nineteenth-century Bristol, a world of pre-scientific medicine and the emerging fields of anthropology and psychiatry.

As the century’s premier theorist of the common origin of all humanity, known as monogenism, Prichard asserted the affinity and equal capacity of all humans. Even though he was politically and socially conservative, Prichard worked behind the scenes to support abolitionism, and he advocated for the humane treatment of colonial British subjects. He challenged the rising tide of scientific racism starting to fester in the academic halls of Europe and the United States. He is also considered one of the pioneers of Celtic linguistics. His influential publications on neurological and psychological conditions called for the humane care and treatment of the mentally ill and mentally disabled and protection of their civil liberties. Born into changing, challenging times, during a revolution in British culture and at the threshold of modern science, Prichard fully embodied the age of improvement.