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Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability
The success of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has long been attributed, in part, to his own adherence to strict standards of Victorian respectability, especially in regard to sex. Gowan Dawson contends that the fashioning of such respectability was by no means straightforward or unproblematic, with Darwin and his principal supporters facing surprisingly numerous and enduring accusations of encouraging sexual impropriety. Integrating contextual approaches to the history of science with work in literary studies, Dawson sheds light on the well-known debates over evolution by examining them in relation to the murky underworlds of Victorian pornography, sexual innuendo, unrespectable freethought and artistic sensualism. Such disreputable and generally overlooked aspects of nineteenth-century culture were actually remarkably central to many of these controversies. Focusing particularly on aesthetic literature and legal definitions of obscenity, Dawson reveals the underlying tensions between Darwin's theories and conventional notions of Victorian respectability.
Show Me the Bone
Nineteenth-century paleontologists boasted that, shown a single bone, they could identify or even reconstruct the extinct creature it came from with infallible certainty—“Show me the bone, and I will describe the animal!” Paleontologists such as Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen were heralded as scientific virtuosos, sometimes even veritable wizards, capable of resurrecting the denizens of an ancient past from a mere glance at a fragmentary bone. Such extraordinary feats of predictive reasoning relied on the law of correlation, which proposed that each element of an animal corresponds mutually with each of the others, so that a carnivorous tooth must be accompanied by a certain kind of jawbone, neck, stomach, limbs, and feet. Show Me the Bone tells the story of the rise and fall of this famous claim, tracing its fortunes from Europe to America and showing how it persisted in popular science and literature and shaped the practices of paleontologists long after the method on which it was based had been refuted. In so doing, Gowan Dawson reveals how decisively the practices of the scientific elite were—and still are—shaped by their interactions with the general public.
Science Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Periodicals played a vital role in the developments in science and medicine that transformed nineteenth-century Britain. Proliferating from a mere handful to many hundreds of titles, they catered to audiences ranging from gentlemanly members of metropolitan societies to working-class participants in local natural history clubs. In addition to disseminating authorized scientific discovery, they fostered a sense of collective identity among their geographically dispersed and often socially disparate readers by facilitating the reciprocal interchange of ideas and information. As such, they offer privileged access into the workings of scientific communities in the period. The essays in this volu...
After Science and Religion
A ground-breaking volume of innovative conversations between science and religion which move beyond hackneyed positions of either conflict or dialogue.
Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800–2000
The vast majority of European countries have never had a Newton, Pasteur or Einstein. Therefore a historical analysis of their scientific culture must be more than the search for great luminaries. Studies of the ways science and technology were communicated to the public in countries of the European periphery can provide a valuable insight into the mechanisms of the appropriation of scientific ideas and technological practices across the continent. The contributors to this volume each take as their focus the popularization of science in countries on the margins of Europe, who in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries may be perceived to have had a weak scientific culture. A variety of scient...
The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age
James Mussell provides an accessible account of the digitization of nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals. As studying this material is essential to understand the period, he argues that we have no choice but to engage with the new digital resources that have transformed how we access the print archive.
Science in the Nursery
This edited collection aims to examine the popularisation of science for children in Britain and France from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the Victorian period. It compares and contrasts for the first time popular science works published at the same time in the two countries, focusing both on non-fictional and fictional texts. Starting when children’s literature emerged as a genre to the end of the nineteenth century it addresses the ways in which popular science for children engaged with wider debates and issues, concerning such topics as gender or religion. Each individual essays brings home how children’s literature revealed contemporary tensions which professional scientists confronted. The wide range of scientific topics examined, from physics and astronomy to natural history and anthropology, offers a large spectrum of types of popular science works for children.
Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature
Reimagining Dinosaurs argues that transatlantic popular literature was critical for transforming the dinosaur into a cultural icon between 1880 and 1920
The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot
This second edition, including some new chapters, provides an essential introduction to all aspects of George Eliot's life and writing. Accessible essays by some of the most distinguished scholars of Victorian literature provide lucid and often original insights into the work of one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century.
Science in Wonderland
Victorian Britain was full of excitement and debate about the new scientific ideas. In 'Science in Wonderland', Melanie Keene shows how Victorian writers used the medium of the fairy tale to bring chemistry, entomology, palaeontology, and evolution to young audiences.
