About this Book

Chapter 1 Evolution and Victorian fiction; Evolution and fiction: the critical tradition; Evolution and the language of fiction; The telling detail and other possible futures; Notes; Chapter 2 The challenge of evolution in Victorian poetry; Introduction; Evolution in Victorian poetry before the Origin; Evolution, faith and nature in Victorian poetry after Darwin Evolution, politics and society: Social Darwinism in Victorian poetry Conclusion and further research; Notes; Chapter 3 Between specimen and imagination; Visualizing evolution; Of scientific bodies, human and animal; Of culture, trees and feet; Popular fantasies, missing links and tenuous ancestors; Closing thoughts; Notes; Chapter 4 Early cinema and evolution; Introduction: cinema, a time machine; Monkey portraits and primitive humans; Between selection and variation: 'the struggle for existence' versus 'protean transformation' in early popular-science ... ; Telescoping time Evolution and the evolution of the popular-science filmConclusion; Notes; Chapter 5 Evolution and Victorian art; Geology and geography; Botany in context; Human evolution; Conclusion; Notes; Chapter 6 'I'm evolving!'; Introduction; Overview of key scholarship; Nature on display; Instinct, essentialism and gender; 'I'm evolving'; Ibsen and Shaw; Conclusion; Notes; Chapter 7 Dance and evolutionary thought in late Victorian discourse; Evolutionists on dance: Spencer and Darwin; Evolutionary anthropologists and dance: Tylor and Frazer; Edward Scott and Spencerian echoes.