‘I had no escape from it. I loved an animalcule:’ Romance Through the Microscope
Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-1862) was an Irish-American Civil War soldier and one of the forerunners of the Science-Fiction genre. His primary literary connection…
longer blog posts
‘Walking into a living grave’: the Orchid Mantis & Alfred Russell Wallace
The orchid mantis, (Hymenopus coronatus) is renowned for its visual resemblance to an orchid in bloom. Its pink heart-shaped mid-and hind-legs…
How the Victorian Craze for Conchology became a Billion-dollar Business
Throughout the nineteenth-century the mania for seashells steadily swelled; they featured on Christmas cards, and adorned countless keepsakes, jewellery, and furniture….
Wistful Imaginings: Reframing the Case of the Cottingley Fairies
The fairy was often thought of as a mode of rebellion against the exactitude of science and technology. This is…
This particular web: a week with George Eliot at Dickens Universe 2017
I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and…
The Secret Art of Victorian Fore-edge Painting
They say that beauty is everywhere, often hidden in plain sight. In the case of the lost art of…
Defining Curiosity in the Victorian Era
What is curiosity? Does it change according to the ebbs and flows of time? While today we might associate it with…
‘A fairyland amongst the wildflowers’, Realism and Romance in the works of Beatrix Potter
An eager student of both the arts and the sciences Beatrix Potter’s childhood was equally enchanted by the discovery of…
Survival of the Thesis, Writing Advice from Charles Darwin
NB: For more on Charles Darwin’s outlook on human emotion see the article that prompted this post Thomas Dixon’s piece…
Dietary Didacticism in Wonderland
[NB: I wrote this piece for the Journal of Victorian Culture Online for ‘Alice’ Day who have kindly agreed that…