Questioning Nature

British Women's Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750–1830

Melissa Bailes

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780813939773
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

In the mid-eighteenth century, many British authors and literary critics anxiously claimed that poetry was in crisis. These writers complained that modern poets plagiarized classical authors as well as one another, asserted that no new subjects for verse remained, and feared poetry's complete exhaustion. Questioning Nature explores how major women writers of the era—including Mary Shelley, Anna Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith—turned in response to developing disciplines of natural history such as botany, zoology, and geology.

Recognizing the sociological implications of inquiries in the natural sciences, these authors renovated notions of originality through natural history while engaging with questions of the day. Classifications, hierarchies, and definitions inherent in natural history were appropriated into discussions of gender, race, and nation. Further, their concerns with authorship, authority, and novelty led them to experiment with textual hybridities and collaborative modes of originality that competed with conventional ideas of solitary genius.

Exploring these authors and their work, Questioning Nature explains how these women writers' imaginative scientific writing unveiled a new genealogy for Romantic originality, both shaping the literary canon and ultimately leading to their exclusion from it.

INDEX

Abrams, M. H., 84, 152, 198; Natural Supernaturalism, 169–70

Addison, Joseph, 5

Aesop, 110, 115

Agassiz, Louis, 227n82

Aikin, John, 31, 93; Barbauld and, 23, 33–34; correspondence with Pulteney, 209n32; Essay on the Application of Natural History to Poetry, 7, 10, 11, 23–29, 39, 44, 98, 109, 112, 220n17, 222n88; Essay on the Plan and Character of Thomson’s Seasons, 210n50; Evenings at Home contributions, 24; on originality, 113, 114, 115; on travel literature, 47

Aikin, Lucy, 104

American Revolution, 52, 116, 128, 144

Anderson, John M., 86

Andrews, Corey E., 215n86

Anning, Mary, 201

Aristotle, 205n6

Armstrong, Isobel, 188

Backscheider, Paula, 86, 220n32

Banks, Joseph, 8, 110, 123, 141, 145, 207n61

Barbauld, Anna, 2, 3; Aikin and, 7, 23–24, 28–29, 33–34; “The Caterpillar,” 42–44; Darwin and, 39–40, 201; descriptive and lyric poetry distinguished, 41–42; descriptive specificity and, 29–30; early life and education, 31, 33–34, 209nn32–33; “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,” 209n28; Essay on Akenside’s Poem on the Pleasures of Imagination, 30; gender attacks on, 37, 39; humor of, 209n34; Hymns in Prose for Children, 30–33; “The Invitation,” 34, 44–45, 185; Lamb’s criticism of, 23, 24, 39, 44; “Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing,” 24–25, 29; Lessons for Children, 30, 208n4; male poets influenced by, 44–46; “On Female Studies,” 23, 34–35, 37, 44, 209n32; “On Plants,” 32; Pennant’s influence on, 57; Poems, 37, 39; “Prefatory Essay” to The Poetical Works of Mr. William Collins, 41–42; “The Rights of Woman,” 210n41; Royal Institution lectures attended by, 209n35; scientific prose distinguished from poetry, 12, 23–31, 46, 47, 54, 201–2; “To a Lady, With Some Painted Flowers,” 36–37; “T...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Questioning Science, Questioning Originality
• I. Gender and Nationalism: Describing and Defining Literary Naturalism
• II. Poetic and Biological Forms: Plagiarism, Originality, and Hybridity
• III. Revolution and Geological Sciences: Translations, Beginnings, and Endings
• Conclusion: Felicia Hemans, Geological Bodies, and the Fate of Originality
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index