Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

and Culture is a new monograph series that aims to represent the most innovative research on literary works that were produced in the Englishspeaking world from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the fin de siècle. Attentive to the historical continuities between 'Romantic' and 'Victorian', the series will feature studies that help scholarship to reassess the meaning of these terms during a century marked by diverse cultural, literary and political movements. The main aim of the series is to look at the increasing influence of types of historicism on our understanding of literary forms and genres. It reflects the shift from critical theory to cultural history that has affected not only the period 1800-1900 but also every field within the discipline of English literature. All titles in the series seek to offer fresh critical perspectives and challenging readings of both canonical and non-canonical writings of this era. Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture examines how literary fairy tales were informed by natural historical knowledge in the Victorian period, as well as how popular science books used fairies to explain natural history at a time when 'nature' became a much debated word. Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture deals with the way in which natural history was connected to the world of fairies and highlights how shifts in the understanding of natural history, especially after 1859, had a significant impact on fairy stories and Victorian experiments with the literary fairy tale. By exploring the interaction between scientific and literary fields, this book shows the ways in which natural knowledge was shaped and disseminated in Victorian culture and illuminates cultural practices through which new representations of nature and the natural world were popularised. This original approach to Victorian culture, blending studies of fictional and non-fictional narratives, examines therefore a part of the history of the mediation of knowledge about nature in the Victorian period and points out how the mediation of this new knowledge contributed to the Victorians' awareness of environmental issues "Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture deals with the way in which natural history was connected to the world of fairies and highlights how shifts in the understanding of natural history, especially after 1859, had a significant impact on fairy stories and Victorian experiments with the literary fairy tale. By exploring the interaction between scientific and literary fields, this book shows the ways in which natural knowledge was shaped and disseminated in Victorian culture and illuminates cultural practices through which new representations of nature and the natural world were popularised. This original approach to Victorian culture, blending studies of fictional and non-fictional narratives, examines therefore a part of the history of the mediation of knowledge about nature in the Victorian period and points out how the mediation of this new knowledge contributed to the Victorians' awareness of environmental issues"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-14 From the Wonders of Nature to the Wonders of Evolution: Charles Kingsley’s Nursery Fairies....Pages 15-46 ‘How Are You to Enter the Fairy-Land of Science?’: The Wonders of the Natural World in Arabella Buckley’s Popular Science Works for Children....Pages 47-64 The Mechanization of Feelings: Mary de Morgan’s ‘A Toy Princess’....Pages 65-79 Nature under Glass: Victorian Cinderellas, Magic and Metamorphosis....Pages 80-100 Nature Exposed: Charting the Wild Body in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’....Pages 101-123 Nature and the Natural World in Mary Louisa Molesworth’s Christmas-Tree Land ....Pages 124-140 Edith Nesbit’s Fairies and Freaks of Nature: Environmental Consciousness in Five Children and It ....Pages 141-159 Epilogue....Pages 160-162 Back Matter....Pages 163-217