Novel Science

Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology

Buckland Adelene

"Novel Science" is the first in-depth study of the shocking, groundbreaking, and sometimes beautiful writings of the gentlemen of the "heroic age" of geology and of the contribution these men made to the literary culture of their day. For these men, literature was an essential part of the practice of science itself, as important to their efforts as mapmaking, fieldwork, and observation. The reading and writing of imaginative literatures helped them to discover, imagine, debate, and give shape and meaning to millions of years of previously undiscovered earth history. Borrowing from the historical fictions of Walter Scott and the poetry of Lord Byron, they invented geology as a science, discovered many of the creatures we now call the dinosaurs, and were the first to unravel and map the sequence and structure of stratified rock. As Adelene Buckland shows, they did this by rejecting the grand narratives of older theories of the earth or of biblical cosmogony: theirs would be a humble science, faithfully recording minute details and leaving the big picture for future generations to paint. Buckland also reveals how these scientists – just as they had drawn inspiration from their literary predecessors – gave Victorian realist novelists such as George Eliot, Charles Kingsley, and Charles Dickens a powerful language with which to create dark and disturbing ruptures in the too-seductive sweep of story.

About the Author

Adelene Buckland is a lecturer in nineteenth-century literature at King's College London. She is co-editor of "A Return to the Common Reader: Print Culture and the Novel, 1850-1900".

Reviews

"'Novel Science' is one of the most exciting and challenging contributions yet made to the booming field of science and literature studies. Combining meticulous and original historical research with groundbreaking readings of nineteenth-century novels and geological texts, it will surprise and delight anyone with an interest in this period, literary or historical. Adelene Buckland offers both a compelling reassessment of the Victorian novel in itself and a reframing of science's place within literary culture, demonstrating that geology played a fundamental and formative role in the writing of fiction. Admirers of Gillian Beer's 'Darwin's Plots' and George Levine's 'Darwin and the Novelists' now have a new classic to contend with" – Ralph O'Connor, author of "The Earth on Show"

"'Novel Science' is a significant and altogether engaging contribution to the field of history of science-meets-literary study. Adelene Buckland's fresh and rigorous work takes seriously her claim that 'if science was literature in the nineteenth century, it is the premise of this book that literature was science too'. In committing itself to the fluidity between these discursive realms – without reducing science to just another narrative, or literature to a repository of scientific references – 'Novel Science' takes up the further challenge of thinking in detail about the practice of geology. This is a major new argument that should be read not only by historians of science but also by literary critics" – Amy M. King, St. John's University

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