1st Edition
Jane Austen & Charles Darwin Naturalists and Novelists
By Peter W. Graham
Copyright 2008
216 Pages
by
Routledge
216 Pages
by
Routledge
216 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Are Jane Austen and Charles Darwin the two great English empiricists of the nineteenth century? Peter W. Graham poses this question as he brings these two icons of nineteenth-century British culture into intellectual conversation in his provocative new book. Graham shows that while the one is generally termed a naturalist (Darwin's preferred term for himself) and the other a novelist, these... Read more
Chapter 1 3 or 4 Families in a Country Village, or Naturalists, Novelists, Empiricists, and Serendipidists; Chapter 2 An Entangled Bank, or Sibling Development in a Family Ecosystem; Chapter 3 Marry—Mary—Marry; Chapter 4 Variations on Variation;
Biography
Peter W. Graham teaches English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA. He publishes widely on 19th-century British literature and culture. His other books include Byron's Bulldog, Don Juan and Regency England, Articulating the Elephant Man (with Fritz Oehlschlaeger), and The Portable Darwin (coedited with Duncan Porter).
'In his eloquent comparative analysis of Austen’s novels and Darwin’s ideas, Peter Graham combines techniques of scientific exploration and literary analysis to dissect the acute powers of observation that enabled these writers to produce works that illuminate social and collective behavior. Jane Austen and Charles Darwin emerge as intellectual kindred not only in their reliance on empiricism and serendipity, but in their relevance for the twenty-first century.' Laurie Kaplan, The George Washington University England Study Center (London) ’In his four interlocking essays, Peter Graham creates a delicious conversation between Jane Austen as novelist, Charles Darwin as naturalist”and himself as critic.' Janet Todd, University of Aberdeen, UK ’...all readers can appreciate this nuanced comparison that keeps Austen's and Darwin's differences in full view.’ Times Literary Supplement ’Graham is a fine writer, and it is indeed a pleasure to join him in his "thought experiment". His readings of Austen are wide-ranging, confident and perceptive throughout, while in building up his account of the "character of Darwin’s mind" (p. 145), he offers up some welcome readings of manuscripts and less well-known books which have not tended to draw much literary critical attention.’ History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences ’... a valuable addition to recent scholarship that applies Darwin's theories to literary texts as well as to the growing body of work showing Austen engaged in her times.’ JASNA News
