Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media

Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.

Contents: Introduction, Geoffrey Cantor, Gowan Dawson, Richard Noakes,Sally Shuttleworth, and Jonathan R. Topham; Women, Children and Gender: Green-stocking or blue? Science in three women's magazines, 1800-50, Ann B. Shteir; The 'empty-headed beauty' and the 'sweet girl graduate': women's science education in Punch, 1860-90, Suzanne Le-May Sheffield; Making socialists or murdering to dissect? Natural history and child socialization in the Labour Prophet and Labour Leader, Caroline Sumpter; Religious Audiences: The periodical as barometer: spiritual measurement and the Evangelical Magazine, Sujit Sivasundaram; Periodicals and the making of reading audiences for science in early 19th-century Britain: the Youth's Magazine, 1828-37, Jonathan R. Topham; Periodicals and book series: complementary aspects of a publisher's mission, Aileen Fyfe; Friends of science? The role of science in Quaker periodicals, Geoffrey Cantor; Naturalizing the Supernatural: Almanacs and the profits of natural knowledge, Katharine Anderson; 'In the natural course of physical things': ghosts and science in Charles Dickens' All the Year Round, Louise Henson; W.T. Stead's occult economies, Roger Luckhurst; Contesting New Technologies: Science, industry, and nationalism in the Dublin Penny Journal, Elizabeth Tilley; Representing 'A century of inventions': 19th-century technology and Victorian Punch, Richard Noakes; The view from the hills: environment and technology in Victorian periodicals, Harriet Ritvo; 'I never will have the electric light in my house': Alice Gordon and the gendered periodical representation of a contentious new technology, Graeme J.N. Gooday; Professionalization and Journalism: The making of an editor: the case of William Crookes, William H. Brock; Knowlege confronts Nature: Richard Proctor and popular science periodicals, Bernard Lightman; 'Within the bounds of science': redirecting controversies to Nature, Peter C. Kjoergaard; Scientific authority and scientific contro