Tag: Charles Darwin

‘A Vision of Animal Existences’: Popular Responses to Darwin

Other

In the refreshment room of London’s Zoological Gardens, the protagonist of Edmund Saul Dixon’s short story, ‘A Vision of Animal Existences’ (1862), spots a woman reading a ‘thick volume’ that he recognizes. He pulls out reading material of his own—a newspaper—and, perusing its contents, finds a discussion appropriate to his surroundings: extinction, artificial selection, and species are amongst its topics. Prompted to refocus on the ‘volume’ of his nearby reader, however, he forges a further connection: ‘the blue-robed lady’s green-covered

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Film Review: The Invisible Woman (2014)

Victorians Beyond the Academy, Victorians in Film

Charlotte Mathieson, University of Warwick February 7th marked two years since the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, and with it the release of The Invisible Woman: the film adaptation by screenwriter Abi Morgan, directed by Ralph Fiennes, of Claire Tomalin’s 1990 biography of Nelly Ternan, the woman who was Dickens’s mistress from 1857 until his death in 1870. At the time of its publication Tomalin’s biography caused controversy among some, but has since become mostly accepted as a credible and valuable

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Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero

Victorians Beyond the Academy

by Peter Raby Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero, a documentary about Alfred Russel Wallace in the year that marks the centenary of his death (BBC 2, April 21st and 28th) proved to be even more than the sum of its parts, which were considerable. Bill Bailey’s knowledge about Wallace and about Indonesia, and his wittily expressed enthusiasm and admiration, were supported by excellent camera-work, illuminating use of documents from the archive at the Natural History Museum, and a dazzling cast of

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Selected Papers from, Strange New Today (Exeter, 17 September 2011)

Victorians Beyond the Academy

JVC Online is delighted to have the opportunity to provide our readers with access to a selection of seven of the twenty-two papers that graduate students delivered at a conference specifically aimed at showcasing their research. In the past decade, there has been a welcome growth in the number of symposia that provide specific opportunities for doctoral students to share their work not only with their peers but also with established scholars who can offer supportive feedback. Such events can

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Tiffany Watt-Smith, ‘Darwin’s Flinch: Sensation Theatre and Scientific Looking in 1872’

Other

Tiffany Watt-Smith won the Journal of Victorian Culture Graduate Prize Essay Competition, 2009. Published in JVC 15.1, her fascinating article explores the similarities between scientific observation and theatrical spectatorship, beginning with Charles Darwin’s self-conscious recollection in his Expressions of the Emotions of how he flinched before a puff-adder at the London Zoological Gardens. The author examines how Darwin’s scientific meditation on emotional gesture and expression was influenced by sensational performances in the theatre and the ways in which he encouraged

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