Useful Knowledge

The Victorians, Morality, and the March of Intellect

By: Alan Rauch

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Paperback | 17 July 2001

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306 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 1.63

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Nineteenth-century England witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of publications and institutions devoted to the creation and the dissemination of knowledge: encyclopedias, scientific periodicals, instruction manuals, scientific societies, children's literature, mechanics' institutes, museums of natural history, and lending libraries. In Useful Knowledge Alan Rauch presents a social, cultural, and literary history of this new knowledge industry and traces its relationships within nineteenth-century literature, ending with its eventual confrontation with Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.
Rauch discusses both the influence and the ideology of knowledge in terms of how it affected nineteenth-century anxieties about moral responsibility and religious beliefs. Drawing on a wide array of literary, scientific, and popular works of the period, the book focusses on the growing importance of scientific knowledge and its impact on Victorian culture. From discussions of Jane Webb Loudon's The Mummy and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, to Charlotte Bront 's The Professor, Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke, and George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, Rauch paints a fascinating picture of nineteenth-century culture and addresses issues related to the proliferation of knowledge and the moral issues of this time period. Useful Knowledge touches on social and cultural anxieties that offer both historical and contemporary insights on our ongoing preoccupation with knowledge.
Useful Knowledge will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth century history, literature, culture, the mediation of knowledge, and the history of science.

Industry Reviews

"Useful Knowledge can stand as a model of informed and scrupulous historicism. The breadth of Rauch's acquaintance with subliterary and paraliterary texts is truly impressive as he clearly lays out what was at stake for nineteenth-century intellectuals and usefully relates their preoccupations with those that concern us now, as we experience another information revolution."--Harriet Ritvo, author of The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature General Literary Studies Literary Studies from 1800 to 1900 Society & Culture Cultural Studies

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Knowledge and the Novel
Food for Thought: The Dissemination of Knowledge in the Early Nineteenth Century
Science in the Popular Novel: Jane Webb Loudon's The Mummy!
The Monstrous Body of Knowledge: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Lessons Learned in Class: Charlotte Brontë's The Professor
The Tailor Transformed: Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke
Destiny as an Unmapped River: George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Useful Knowledge

The Victorians, Morality, and the March of Intellect

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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