Category: Reviews
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Hall, Dewey W., Romantic Naturalists, Early Environmentalists: An Ecocritical Study, 1789-1912
Dewey W. Hall, Romantic Naturalists, Early Environmentalists: An Ecocritical Study, 1789-1912 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) 240pp. £65.00 Hb, PDF, ePUB. ISBN 978-1-4094-2264-8 The current field of ecocriticism is expansive and vibrant. As environmental crises continue to demand urgent attention and material response, the role of literature in shaping this response has come under increasing scrutiny. In…
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Alexander, Sarah C, Victorian Literature and the Physics of the Imponderable
Sarah C Alexander, Victorian Literature and the Physics of the Imponderable (London: Routledge, 2015) 256pp. £95 Hb, £27.99 Mobi, £34.99 EPUB. ISBN 9781848935662 Sarah C. Alexander’s Victorian Literature and the Physics of the Imponderable is yet another valuable effort to rethink the issue of literature and science in ways other than that of the “Two…
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Flanagan, Victoria, Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction: The Posthuman Subject
Victoria Flanagan, Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction: The Posthuman Subject (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) viii + 205pp. £58.00 Hb, £43.99 eBook. ISBN 978-1-137-36205-6 Victoria Flanagan’s Technology and Identity in Young Adult Fiction offers an engaging exploration of technology in young adult (henceforth, YA) fiction, including ideas of identity, embodiment, subjectivity and individual agency in…
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Pasanek, Brad, Metaphors of Mind: An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary
Brad Pasanek, Metaphors of Mind: An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2015). 392 pp. $49.95 Hb, ePUB, PDF, MOBI. ISBN 978-1-4214-1688-5 Brad Pasanek’s Metaphors of Mind is a bold, broad and ambitious study. This compendium of metaphors that were used in the eighteenth century – ‘the heyday of figurative empiricism in Green Britain’…
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Höglund, Johan, The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence
Johan Höglund, The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 224pp. Hb, PDF, ePUB £95.00. ISBN: 978-1-4094-4954-6 Reading Höglund’s The American Imperial Gothic in the current political climate is an uncomfortable experience. In his preface he states that ‘the border between good and evil is often absolute in the American imperial gothic.…
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Gottlieb, Evan and Juliet Shields (eds.), Representing Place in British Literature and Culture, 1660–1830: From Local to Global
Gottlieb, Evan and Juliet Shields, (eds.) Representing Place in British Literature and Culture, 1660–1830: From Local to Global (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) 234 pp. £95.00 Hb, PDF, EPub. ISBN: 978-1-4724-0218-9. Although dedicated to British literary culture, this stimulating volume participates in a wider critical shift which looks beyond the nation-state towards varieties of local, trans-local, national,…
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Peterfreund, Stuart, Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to Darwin: The Way of the Argument from Design
Stuart Peterfreund, Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to Darwin: The Way of the Argument from Design (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012). 212 pp. £58 Hb, EPUB, PDF. ISBN 978-0-230-10884-4. Since the publication of Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plots in 1983, Darwin and evolution have remained essential topics around which the preoccupations and methodologies of…
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Secord, James, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age
James Secord, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 320 pp. £18.99 Hb. ISBN: 9780199675265. James Secord’s Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Oxford University Press, 2014) takes as its focus seven key texts, including Humphrey Davy’s…
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Hamlin, Christopher, More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever
Christopher Hamlin, More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2014). 400 pp, 11 halftones, 9 line drawings. £16.50 Pb, EPub, PDF. ISBN: 978-1-421-41502-4. Christopher Hamlin’s comprehensive work seeks to address the common experience of fever, moving from its role in classical medicine, to post-modern conceptions of the affliction. With…
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Budge, Gavin, Romanticism, Medicine and the Natural Supernatural: Transcendent Vision and Bodily Spectres, 1789-1852
Gavin Budge, Romanticism, Medicine and the Natural Supernatural: Transcendent Vision and Bodily Spectres, 1789-1852 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2013). viii + 295 pp. £63 Hb, EPUB, PDF. ISBN 978-0-230-23846-6 Literary critics and historians of medicine will learn much from Gavin Budge’s wide-ranging and erudite study, which argues that Romantic medicine influenced writers from Coleridge through Hazlitt to…
