Victorians and the prehistoric : tracks to a lost world / Michael Freeman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Freeman, Michael J., 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Paleontology--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Paleontology.

Paleontology--Social aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Social aspects.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

310 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2004]

Summary:

As the Victorians excavated the earth to create canals and railways in the early part of the nineteenth century, geological discoveries brought to light new narratives of the prehistoric, ideas that resounded in British society, art and literature of the period. This engaging and generously illustrated book explores the Victorian fascination with all things prehistoric. Michael Freeman shows how men and women were both energised and unsettled by the realisation that the formation of the earth over hundreds of millions of years and Darwin's theories about the origins of life contradicted what they had read in the Bible. He describes the rock and fossil collecting craze that emerged, the sources of inspiration and imagery discovered by writers and artists, and the new importance of geologists and paleontologists. He also notes that the intellectual and emotional journey undertaken by Victorian men and women in the face of the unfolding earth narratives was increasingly being recorded, in more institutional form, in the museums that were springing up in Victorian cities and towns. Beginning first as basic repositories for the science of collecting, these buildings ultimately became much more powerful symbols, shrines to all that was progressive of their age but still clothed in the trappings of traditional ideas. The greatest natural history museums were housed in cathedral-like structures, sometimes embellished at almost every turn with features that appeared to celebrate not scientific evolution but the natural world as a form of divine creation.

Contents:

1 Tracks to a Lost World 9

An Island Jewel 10

Canal Geology 28

The Iron Road 41

2 Time ... that Unfathomable Abyss 53

Worlds without End 54

'Old Principles Working New Results' 64

'From Greenland's Icy Mountains' 72

Vestiges in Time 79

3 The Testimony of the Rocks 85

Discovering Eden 85

Reading the Earth 91

Artistic Visions 96

Observation, Observation, Observation 108

Brandishing the Torch of Science 118

Representing the Earth 122

4 'Let there be Dragons' 131

A Land with Real Monsters 131

Recovering Former Life-Worlds 142

Journeying the Vast Deserts of Space and Time 148

The Craze for Natural History 154

5 'Washing Away a World' 163

Re-imagining the Deluge 163

The Deluge as Geological Witness 178

6 Competition, Competition ... 191

A Ferment of Money, Ideas and Beliefs 192

Darwin's 'Story' 199

Looking into the Unknown 213

7 The Prehistoric as Exhibition 227

Natural Worlds on Show 228

The Museum is Born 231

Narrating the Prehistoric 243

'... But is this the Prehistoric World at all?' 249.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-300) and index.

ISBN:

0300103344

OCLC:

54929622