Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture

"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"--

List of contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. From The Wonders of Nature to the Wonders of Evolution: Charles Kingsley's Nursery Fairies 2. '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 3. The Mechanization of Feelings: Mary de Morgan's Toy Princess 4. Nature Under Glass: Victorian Cinderellas, Magic and Metamorphosis 5. Nature Exposed: Charting the Wild Body in Little Red Riding Hood 6. Nature and the Natural World in Mary Louisa Molesworth's Christmas-Tree Land 7. Edith Nesbit's Fairies and Freaks of Nature: Environmental Consciousness in Five Children and It Epilogue Index

Report

"A winner of the SAES/AFEA Research Prize, this rich and complex study brilliantly merges fairylands and scientific worlds. ... proves a compelling read, and a fascinating and valuable introduction to fields as diverse as nineteenth century's natural history, fantastic literature (not only for children) and Victorian culture at large." (Mara Mattoscio, Rivista di Studi Vittoriani, Vol. 40, 2017) 

Product details

• Authors: L. Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence Talairach-Vielmas
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.05.2014
• EAN: 9781137342393
• ISBN: 978-1-137-34239-3
• No. of pages: 217
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture; Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth; Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture; Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); B, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory, Fiction, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literature: history & criticism, Literary theory, Culture—Study and teaching, European Literature, Literature, Modern—19th century, Nineteenth-Century Literature, British literature, British and Irish Literature, Fiction Literature, Palgrave Literature Collection, Literature—Philosophy, Children's Literature, Children’s & teenage literature studies: general, culture;time;Victorian era;British and Irish Literature