Samantha Evans’ Darwin & Women
The latest publication from the Darwin Correspondence Project, Darwin and Women, begins with its own taxonomic quandary. From the outset…
Tag: victorian culture
‘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…
‘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…
The Victorian Kindle: Schloss’s Bijou Almanac
In the mid nineteenth-century no handbag was complete without a Schloss Bijou Almanac. Anticipating the portability of kindles and tablets,…
‘The Entomologist’s Dream’
In The Entomologist’s Dream (1909) by Edmund Dulac an entomologist – in a state of near collapse – bears witness to…
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….
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…
Dietary Didacticism in Wonderland
[NB: I wrote this piece for the Journal of Victorian Culture Online for ‘Alice’ Day who have kindly agreed that…