Questioning Nature : British Women's Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750–1830

In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. These writers complained that modern poets plagiarized classical authors as well as one another, asserted that no new subjects for verse remained, and feared poetry's complete exhaustion. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers of the era—including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith—turned in response to developing disciplines of natural history such as botany, zoology, and geology. Recognizing the sociological implications of inquiries in the natural sciences, these authors renovated notions of originality through natural history while engaging with questions of the day. Classifications, hierarchies, and definitions inherent in natural history were appropriated into discussions of gender, race, and nation. Further, their concerns with authorship, authority, and novelty led them to experiment with textual hybridities and collaborative modes of originality that competed with conventional ideas of solitary genius. Exploring these authors and their work, Questioning Nature explains how these women writers' imaginative scientific writing unveiled a new genealogy for Romantic originality, both shaping the literary canon and ultimately leading to their exclusion from it. Intro -- British Women's Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750- 1830 -- C O N T E N T S -- AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S -- Introduction: Questioning Science, Questioning Originality -- Originality in Crisis: Literary Plagiarism and Imitation -- Scientific Originality -- Rethinking the Georgic InflUence -- A Different Kind of Romantic-Era Nature Poetry -- Categories of Inquiry: Chapter Summaries -- I Gender and Nationalism Describing and Defining Literary Naturalism -- 1 To Teach and to Please: Anna Barbauld's Original Poetry and Educational Prose of Natural History -- Definition versus Description: Educational Prose versus Pleasurable Poetry -- Natural Theology and Teaching Nature's Prose -- "Thy Bounded Sphere": Women's Education, Women's Poetry -- The Science Which Is Not One -- "Where Science Smiles, the Muses Join the Train": A Qualified Approach -- 2 Hybrid Britons: West Indian Colonial Identity and Georgic Originality in Maria Riddell's Natural History -- Riddell's Personal Hybridities -- Re-imagining Originality and Hybridity in the "West- India Georgic" -- Pennant's "British" Natural History -- Madeira's Anti-Georgic -- National/Natural Hybridity -- British Values in the West Indies -- Slavery and the Paradox of Hybrid Britons -- II Poetic and Biological Forms: Plagiarism, Originality, and Hybridity -- 3 The Evolution of the Plagiarist: Natural History in Anna Seward's Order of Poetics -- Literary Naturalism -- Classifying the Plagiarist -- Smith and the Order of Poetics -- The Science of Sonneteering -- Anticipating the Next (De)Generation -- 4 Plagiarism and the Poet-Naturalist: Charlotte Smith's Collective Originality -- The Poet- Naturalist -- The Poet- Naturalist and the Collector -- (Non)hybridities -- Solving Mysteries through Scientific Collaboration -- The Jay and the Nightingale

In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. These writers complained that modern poets plagiarized classical authors as well as one another, asserted that no new subjects for verse remained, and feared poetry's complete exhaustion. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers of the era—including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith—turned in response to developing disciplines of natural history such as botany, zoology, and geology.

Recognizing the sociological implications of inquiries in the natural sciences, these authors renovated notions of originality through natural history while engaging with questions of the day. Classifications, hierarchies, and definitions inherent in natural history were appropriated into discussions of gender, race, and nation. Further, their concerns with authorship, authority, and novelty led them to experiment with textual hybridities and collaborative modes of originality that competed with conventional ideas of solitary genius.

Exploring these authors and their work, Questioning Nature explains how these women writers' imaginative scientific writing unveiled a new genealogy for Romantic originality, both shaping the literary canon and ultimately leading to their exclusion from it.

In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. These writers complained that modern poets plagiarized classical authors as well as one another, asserted that no new subjects for verse remained, and feared poetry's complete exhaustion. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers of the era—including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith—turned in response to developing disciplines of natural history such as botany, zoology, and geology. 0Recognizing the sociological implications of inquiries in the natural sciences, these authors renovated notions of originality through natural history while engaging with questions of the day. Classifications, hierarchies, and definitions inherent in natural history were appropriated into discussions of gender, race, and nation. Further, their concerns with authorship, authority, and novelty led them to experiment with textual hybridities and collaborative modes of originality that competed with conventional ideas of solitary genius. 0Exploring these authors and their work, Questioning Nature explains how these women writers' imaginative scientific writing unveiled a new genealogy for Romantic originality, both shaping the literary canon and ultimately leading to their exclusion from it In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers - including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith - responded by turning to the era's rising fascination with new discoveries in developing disciplines of natural history such as botany, zoology, and geology.