The Invention of Clouds is the true story of a shy young Quaker, Luke Howard, and his pioneering work to define what had hitherto been random and unknowable structures: clouds. An amateur meteorologist, Howard was catapulted to fame in December of 1802 when he named the clouds, a defining point in natural history and meteorology. His poetic names and groundbreaking work made him internationally famous, and he became a cult figure for Romantics like Shelley, Keats, and Goethe, who revered his vision of an aerial landscape. Meteorology fast became a respectable science, legitimized by the new elevation of a Linnaean classification.

Although his work is still the basis of modern meteorology, Howard himself has been overlooked. Richard Hamblyn's concise work -- part history of science, part cultural excavation -- redresses the balance and introduces a new audience to the language of the skies.