Jane Austen & Charles Darwin
Jane Austen & Charles Darwin
Ashgate | March 27, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0754658511 | 214 pages | PDF | 1.6 MB
Ashgate | March 27, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0754658511 | 214 pages | PDF | 1.6 MB
Are Jane Austen and Charles Darwin the two great English empiricists of the nineteenth century? Peter W. Graham poses this question as he brings these two icons of nineteenth-century British culture into intellectual conversation in his provocative new book. Graham shows that while the one is generally termed a naturalist (Darwin's preferred term for himself) and the other a novelist, these characterizations are at least partially interchangeable, as each author possessed skills that would serve well in either arena. Both Austen and Darwin are naturalists who look with a sharp, cold eye at the concrete particulars of the world around them. Both are in certain senses novelists who weave densely particularized and convincingly grounded narratives that convey their personal observations and perceptions to wide readerships.