Review
Title: 1820: Dawning of the Restoration
Author: Richard E. Bennett
Publisher: BYU RSC with Deseret Book
Genre: 19th Century, LDS History & Biography
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 400
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781944394943
eISBN: 978-1-62973-959-5
Price: $31.99
Reviewed by Sherry Ann Miller for the Association for Mormon Letters
As is pointed out in the description of 1820: Dawning of the Restoration, this 400-page volume encompasses and examines “four cornerstones” of the time period from approximately 1780 to 1820, with some basic information beyond the First Vision time frame. Those four cornerstones include:
- Revolution and Reform
- Romanticism
- Emancipation
- Religious Revivalism
In 1820, author Richard E. Bennett utilizes a biographical format to focus on the remarkable figures of 1820 who led revolutionary and reformation efforts of existing thoughts on politics, economics, the arts, and romanticism of the age. He also includes those whose work led to advances in science and religion. All of the figures in 1820 contributed work that in some obscure little way would precede The First Vision and lead to the full restoration.
Don’t let the title, 1820: Dawning of the Restoration, mislead you in any way. The lives whom Bennett chose for this phenomenal biographical history had their own part to play before the First Vision, beginning with Napoleon Bonaparte and encompassing a wide range of men and women including Jean-Francois Champollion, Tsar Alexander I, composer Ludwig van Beethoven, artist Gericault, poets Coleridge and Wordsworth, King George IV, Queen Caroline, William Wilberforce, Hannah More, and many others from across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans away from North America. Each historical character portrayed had his or her own role that preceded the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, up to and including an exceedingly brief glimpse into the world known by the boy, Joseph Smith, Jr.
Beautifully leading up to what I hoped would be the First Vision, and giving a preview of various events in the lives that preceded, in one way or another, the Second Great Awakening and mankind’s quest for divine truth, I found 1820: Dawning of the Restoration an absorbing account of how the Spirit of the Lord moved people and nations into position, preparing—always preparing—for the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Chapter Eight, for example, opened with these immortal lyrics by John Newton (1725-1807):
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see…
Little did I know the author meant me, in this case.
Perpetually teasing the reader into continuing a little further, each chapter seemed to lure me in like a storm-tossed ship toward a safe harbor. I was not disappointed as I discovered over and over again information I either never knew or had long forgotten. Heroes and heroines, scientists and sailors, all who lived or sailed before 1820, and upon land and oceans all around the globe.
My absolute favorite character was Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), who is graciously only called Humboldt or Alexander in chapter twelve. This remarkable fellow spent his entire adult life (about seventy years) immersed in the sciences, botany, geology, meteorology, astronomy, etc., and in cataloging and writing down practically everything he learned of the natural world, including navigation, seamanship, and cartography. He lived during a time when the word scientist had never been penned, and he wrote whenever he was not discovering anew. Cosmos is, perhaps, the best known of all his dozens of books, but it was not the number of books he’d written, nor the hundreds of thousands of flora or fauna he’d discovered that captured my imagination. No. I found Humboldt’s attention to detail and his eagerness for scientific discovery absolutely enthralling. I quickly realized why he was known as the “Napoleon of Science.”
Bennett is a superbly skilled writer, able to present biographies and histories with such an exciting approach that I thought to myself, I can’t wait to get to the last chapter where Joseph Smith, Jr., will be given such prominence as enthralling and beautiful as the biographies all these other men and women were given. They who aided the Lord in making it possible for the restoration which truly began with the First Vision would naturally come first, but I sensed that the last chapter would belong to the boy-prophet, and he would be written about with equal fervor and dedication. Surely.
Richard E. Bennett gave a thorough accounting of all the many advances made in music, poetry, politics, religion, and the sciences leading up to 1820. His research, summarizations, and conclusions in each chapter of 1820: Dawning of the Restoration were perfectly clear. One biography built upon the next until the characters seemed to come alive off the pages of this remarkable book, allowing the reader to sail around the world alongside them.
However, the final chapter of 1820: Dawning of the Restoration ended so abruptly, with only three paragraphs about the boy, Joseph Smith, Jr., that I kept turning many pages of bibliography to see if the rest of the story had inadvertently been misplaced. Imagine my disappointment when I finally realized the author had written four hundred pages of spell-binding biographies only to end the book with three short paragraphs on the boy-prophet; it was, sadly, lacking the hope all those previous pages had fostered in this reader’s mind about the actual beginning of the restoration, the First Vision.
While I would recommend 1820: Dawning of the Restoration because it is a fascinating voyage, I think it would have been nice to know upfront that it brings your ship through a magnificent storm, the salt spray clinging to your skin, toward the crest of a steep wave with more than enough wind to continue your forward motion . . . then shreds the canvas, dumps the air from your sails, and leaves your ship floundering in an angry gale.