Uncommon Contexts: Encounters Between Science and Literature, 1800-1914(23 Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century)

Britain in the long nineteenth century developed an increasing interest in science of all kinds. Whilst poets and novelists took inspiration from technical and scientific innovations, those directly engaged in these new disciplines relied on literary techniques to communicate their discoveries to a wider audience. The essays in this collection uncover this symbiotic relationship between literature and science, at the same time bridging the disciplinary gulf between the history of science and literary studies. Specific case studies include the engineering language used by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the role of physiology in the development of the sensation novel and how mass communication made people lonely.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - Ben Marsden Part I: Literary Genres of Science Writing 1 The Experimental Novel and the Literature of Physiology - Paul White 2 An Active Nature: Robert Hunt and the Genres of Science Writing - Melanie Keene 3 Hyena-Hunting and Byron-Bashing in the Old North: William Buckland, Geological Verse and the Radical Threat - Ralph O'Connor Part II: Pushing the Boundaries of 'Literature and Science' 4 Re-reading Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Engineering Literature in the Early Nineteenth Century - Ben Marsden 5 Genre and Geometry: Victorian Mathematics and the Study of Literature and Science - Alice Jenkins Part III: Science and Technology in Fiction 6 Elizabeth Gaskell's Social Vision: The Natural Histories of Mary Barton - Anne Secord 7 'I Have in Mind a Study of a Scotch Seaman': Witnessing Power in Joseph Conrad's Early Literature of the Sea - Crosbie Smith 8 'The Telegraph has Other Work to Do': Reading and Consciousness in Henry James's In the Cage - Hazel Hutchison

Review :
'The essays here - indispensable examples of how to think about the genres of science communication - therefore have a significance that goes beyond the long nineteenth century ... deserves to be widely read, and not just by students of nineteenth-century science and literature.' Annals of Science 'a methodologically innovative and hugely interesting contribution to the rich seam of historicist Literature and Science studies ... a valuable addition to Pickering & Chatto's "Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century" series.' ISIS 'The contributions collectively explore and analyze a wide range of manifestations of the mutual engagement of literature and science during the longer nineteenth century.' Metascience