Science, Fiction, and the Fin-de-Siècle Periodical Press

Will Tattersdill

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781107144651
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316540862
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this revisionary study, Will Tattersdill argues against the reductive 'two cultures' model of intellectual discourse by exploring the cultural interactions between literature and science embodied in late nineteenth-century periodical literature, tracing the emergence of the new genre that would become known as 'science fiction'. He examines a range of fictional and non-fictional fin-de-siècle writing around distinct scientific themes: Martian communication, future prediction, X-rays, and polar exploration. Every chapter explores a major work of H. G. Wells, but also presents a wealth of exciting new material drawn from a variety of late Victorian periodicals. Arguing that the publications in which they appeared, as well as the stories themselves, played a crucial part in the development of science fiction, Tattersdill uses the form of the general interest magazine as a way of understanding the relationship between the arts and the sciences, and the creation of a new literary genre.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: material entanglements
• Chapter 1 Intrinsic intelligibility: communications with Mars, and between disciplines, in the pages of the magazines
• Chapter 2 Distance over time: using periodicals to predict the future
• Chapter 3 New photography: X-rays and the images of the New Journalism
• Chapter 4 Further northward: polar exploration and empire in the fact and fiction of the popular press
• Conclusion: bad science and the study of English
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series list