Category: Reviews
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Boyle, Jen E, Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature
Jen E Boyle, Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) ix + 169 pp. £95 Hb. ISBN 9781409400691 Jen Boyle’s Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature traces the developments in anamorphic representations in art, science and literature from late seventeenth through to the eighteenth century. Aptly beginning the book with an extract from Samuel Pepys’s…
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Voigts, Eckart and Barbara Schaff and Monika Pietrzak-Franger (eds), Reflecting on Darwin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014)
Eckart Voigts, Barbara Schaff and Monika Pietrzak-Franger (eds.), Reflecting on Darwin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) xii + 231 pp. £95 Hb, £90.25 Kindle. ISBN 978-1-4724-1407-6 Scholars on Darwin and Darwinism will be disappointed with how little of Darwin himself there is in this book. Setting out to discover the significance of Darwin today (5), this book…
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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…
