In the 1850s John Banvard was a famous painter, and perhaps the first millionaire painter in history. Acclaimed by such dignitaries as Dickens, Longfellow and Queen Victoria, his wealth and stature seemed set in stone. But who now has ever heard of him? In this entertaining book, American writer Paul Collins sets out to restore the status of those who had great ideas or great skills, but later fell into obscurity. There is the delusional physicist, Rene Blandlot, who discovered something called the N-Ray, Jean Francois Sudre who attempted to invent a universal language based entirely on musical notes, the popular astronomy writer Thomas Dick, whose work has been out of print for over a century.
In these discursive, amusing and salutary tales, Collins writes sympathetically about these courageous nobodies who dared to dream.