Evolution and Victorian Culture

In this collection of essays from leading scholars, the dynamic interplay between evolution and Victorian culture is explored for the first time, mapping new relationships between the arts and sciences. Rather than focusing simply on evolution and literature or art, this volume brings together essays exploring the impact of evolutionary ideas on a wide range of cultural activities including painting, sculpture, dance, music, fiction, poetry, cinema, architecture, theatre, photography, museums, exhibitions and popular culture. Broad-ranging, rather than narrowly specialized, each chapter provides a brief introduction to key scholarship, a central section exploring original insights drawn from primary source material, and a conclusion offering overarching principles and a projection towards further areas of research. Each chapter covers the work of significant individuals and groups applying evolutionary theory to their particular art, both as theorists and practitioners. This comprehensive examination of topics sheds light on larger and previously unknown Victorian cultural patterns.

Introduction Bernard V. Lightman and Bennett Zon; 1. Evolution and Victorian fiction Cannon Schmitt; 2. Poetry John Holmes; 3. Between specimen and imagination Elizabeth Edwards; 4. Early cinema and evolution Oliver Gaycken; 5. Evolution and Victorian arts Barbara Larson; 6. 'I'm evolving!': varieties of evolution on the Victorian stage Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr; 7. Dance and evolutionary thought in late Victorian discourse Theresa Jill Buckland; 8. The 'non-Darwinian' revolution and the Great Chain of Musical Being Bennett Zon; 9. Development and display: progressive evolution in British Victorian architecture and architectural theory Carla Yanni; 10. Dramas of development: exhibitions and evolution in Victorian Britain Sadiah Qureshi; 11. The popularization of evolution and Victorian culture Bernard V. Lightman.

Bernard V. Lightman is Professor of Humanities at York University, Toronto, where he is Director of the Institute for Science and Technology Studies. He is also the Editor of the History of Science Society's flagship journal, Isis. His latest publications include Evolutionary Naturalism in Victorian Britain (2009), Victorian Popularizers of Science (2007) and Science in the Marketplace (2007, co-edited with Aileen Fyfe).
Bennett Zon is Professor of Music at Durham University, where he is also Director of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Music. He has published articles, dictionary and encyclopaedia entries, reviews and edited volumes, as well as monographs including Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2007), Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (2000) and The English Plainchant Revival (1999).