Animals, Museum Culture and Children's Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Animals, Museum Culture and Children's Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Curious Beasties explores the relationship between the zoological and palaeontological specimens brought back from around the world in the long nineteenth centurybe they alive, stuffed or fossilisedand the development of children's literature at this time. Children's literature emerged as dizzying numbers of new species flooded into Britain with scientific expeditions, from giraffes and hippopotami to kangaroos, wombats, platypuses or sloths. As the book argues, late Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian children's writers took part in the urge for mass education and presented the world and its curious creatures to children, often borrowing from their museum culture and its objects to map out that world. This original exploration illuminates how children's literature dealt with the new ordering of the world, offering a unique viewpoint on the construction of science in the long nineteenth century.

Explores children's literature as seen through popular zoology and palaeontology Offers a unique viewpoint on the construction of science in the long nineteenth century Investigates ways children's literature of the period reflected imperial culture

Auteur
Laurence Talairach is Professor of English at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and Associate Researcher at the Alexandre Koyré Centre for the History of Science and Technology, France. Her research specialises in the interrelations between nineteenth-century literature, medicine and science.

Résumé
"Talairaich has masterfully synthesized a vast and rich array of research on both obscure and familiar children's texts, tracing numerous allusions back to their origins and teasing apart the network of ideas in Victorian museum culture." (Anna McCullough, Modern Language Review, Vol. 118 (3), July, 2023)

Contenu

Introduction.- Chapter 1: Wild and Exotic 'Beasties' in Early Children's Literature.- Chapter 2: Victorian Menageries.- Chapter 3: Young Collectors.- Chapter 4: Nonsense 'Beasties'.- Chapter 5: Prehistoric 'Beasties'.- Chapter 6: Epilogue.