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Fiction or philosophy, profound knowledge or shocking heresy? When Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously in 1844, it sparked one of the greatest sensations of the Victorian era. More than a hundred thousand readers were spellbound by its startling vision—an account of the world that extended from the formation of the solar system to the spiritual destiny of humanity. As gripping as a popular novel, Vestiges combined all the current scientific theories in fields ranging from astronomy and geology to psychology and economics. The book was banned, it was damned, it was hailed as the gospel for a new age. This is where our own public controversies about evolution began.
In a pioneering cultural history, James A. Secord uses the story of Vestiges to create a panoramic portrait of life in the early industrial era from the perspective of its readers. We join apprentices in a factory town as they debate the consequences of an evolutionary ancestry. We listen as Prince Albert reads aloud to Queen Victoria from a book that preachers denounced as blasphemy vomited from the mouth of Satan. And we watch as Charles Darwin turns its pages in the flea-ridden British Museum library, fearful for the fate of his own unpublished theory of evolution. Using secret letters, Secord reveals how Vestiges was written and how the anonymity of its author was maintained for forty years. He also takes us behind the scenes to a bustling world of publishers, printers, and booksellers to show how the furor over the book reflected the emerging industrial economy of print.
Beautifully written and based on painstaking research, Victorian Sensation offers a new approach to literary history, the history of reading, and the history of science. Profusely illustrated and full of fascinating stories, it is the most comprehensive account of the making and reception of a book (other than the Bible) ever attempted.
Winner of the 2002 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society
- Sales Rank: #1862350 in Books
- Published on: 2001-02-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.60" w x 6.00" l, 2.10 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 624 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was one of the Victorian era's bestsellers. In England in the 1840s, everyone was reading it: aristocrats, students, barmaids, farmers. Those who couldn't read were having it read to them, and everyone was discussing it over tea or ale. Pre-Darwinian, the book shocked and titillated readers by suggesting that the planets and stars had their origin in a blazing fire-mist and that life on earth had evolved. University of Cambridge's Secord traces the history of science in Victorian times and translates the wacky theories in Vestiges into modern, accessible language; he also outlines a history of reading and publishing in 19th-century England. We learn, for example, that in the two decades before the publication of Vestiges, English bookmakers began experimenting with more identifiable bindings. Publishers were wary of new, untested novelists but churned out cheap volumes of nonfiction, many of them on scientific themes. Early in the century, working-class people read primarily religious works, radical political pamphlets and astrology guides, but in the 1830s they began devouring scientific treatises, boning up on phrenology and physiology. Secord also shows how a small army of writers and editors managed to profit from Vestiges--writers were paid top rates to review the book; scientific periodicals began flying off the stands after the book appeared. In addition, a plethora of outraged responses to the perceived sacrilege provide a printed microcosm of the West's longstanding battle between science and religion. Secord's book is an exemplar of nuanced, scholarly curiosity--i.e., he delivers a brief study of the phenomenon of sensation in the 19th century--and clear, understated prose. Anyone interested in English history or the histories of science or literature shouldn't miss it. Illus. throughout.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Inside Flap
Fiction or philosophy, profound knowledge or shocking heresy? When Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously in 1844, it sparked one of the greatest sensations of the Victorian era. More than a hundred thousand readers were spellbound by its startling vision—an account of the world that extended from the formation of the solar system to the spiritual destiny of humanity. As gripping as a popular novel, Vestiges combined all the current scientific theories in fields ranging from astronomy and geology to psychology and economics. The book was banned, it was damned, it was hailed as the gospel for a new age. This is where our own public controversies about evolution began.
In a pioneering cultural history, James A. Secord uses the story of Vestiges to create a panoramic portrait of life in the early industrial era from the perspective of its readers. We join apprentices in a factory town as they debate the consequences of an evolutionary ancestry. We listen as Prince Albert reads aloud to Queen Victoria from a book that preachers denounced as blasphemy vomited from the mouth of Satan. And we watch as Charles Darwin turns its pages in the flea-ridden British Museum library, fearful for the fate of his own unpublished theory of evolution. Using secret letters, Secord reveals how Vestiges was written and how the anonymity of its author was maintained for forty years. He also takes us behind the scenes to a bustling world of publishers, printers, and booksellers to show how the furor over the book reflected the emerging industrial economy of print.
Beautifully written and based on painstaking research, Victorian Sensation offers a new approach to literary history, the history of reading, and the history of science. Profusely illustrated and full of fascinating stories, it is the most comprehensive account of the making and reception of a book (other than the Bible) ever attempted.
About the Author
James A. Secord is Reader in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He is author of, among others, Controversy in Victorian Geology, editor of the Chicago edition of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings, and coeditor of Cultures of Natural History.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
This is an absolutely amazing book. It takes you step-by-step into the depths ...
By Peter Hickman
This is an absolutely amazing book. It takes you step-by-step into the depths of the early Victorian Mind as well as into the backrooms of scientific work at the very moment the sciences were working out their social identities.
It is beautifully, even dramatically written and marvelously researched and illustrated. There are few books as good and surprising and satisfying and informative as this one.
33 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
A review from the Sunday Times, London
By A Customer
From the Sunday Times, 18 February 2001
Bigger than Darwin
VICTORIAN SENSATION: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by James A Secord Chicago U P pp624
MIRANDA SEYMOUR
Tennyson, with whom this accomplished work begins and ends, was an avid reader. In 1844, he spotted a review of an anonymously authored book which, according to the critic, convincingly linked the natural sciences to the history of creation. The poet, like many other readers of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, had already formed what we might consider advanced views on this subject. Man had resulted from a slow gestation beginning with simple invertebrates; man's ability to reason and distinguish between good and bad was part of his development. Tennyson had already completed much of In Memoriam, arguably the most powerful of Victorian poems. After reading Vestiges, he used its notion of an ever-ascending condition to celebrate the idea of a link "Betwixt us and the crowning race".
Tennyson's readers knew exactly what that reference meant. It is we who have lost it. Hailing Darwin as the great originator, we have forgotten that Vestiges, in the mid-19th century, had a greater impact, reaching far more readers and being discussed at all levels.
This is the central point of James A Secord's book. The idea he illustrates in a hundred entertaining ways is that we, as readers, like making narratives. We want things tidy, with beginnings and ends. It's reassuring to suppose that the concept of evolutionary culture began with Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859. Reassuring, and wrong, not just because Darwin's grandfather had been writing about evolutionary matters in the previous century, but because geologists had reached Darwin's conclusions on evolution - not natural selection, which blew up a storm rather later - years before he published his turgid and, in many respects, quite cautious book.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published (anonymously) in 1818, was not directly responsible for the upward surge of new ideas about creation and spontaneous generation. Shelley's extraordinary book did, however, provide the creationists and their opponents with a potent image. Discussions of man's origins were regular among the circles in which she herself moved; her own interest in fossil history led her to consider writing a book on the subject. The suggestions made by Vestiges were, then, original only in the elegance of their formulation. (Even its opponents conceded that the prose was superb.) Revealingly, the gossips and critics were able to produce at least 10 authors who might have produced such an argument. Two of them, intriguingly, were women.
"Sensational" was the description always given to Vestiges. In Britain alone, it went through 14 editions and sold 40,000 copies: why? It helped, of course, that Vestiges looked small and user-friendly, its scarlet cover causing one irate reviewer to compare it to "the accomplished harlot". It was, unlike Darwin's later work, easy to follow and illustrated with homely analogies. Above all, it was a curiosity. The anonymity by which the Scottish publisher, Robert Chambers, screened himself for 40 years became one of the book's hottest selling points.
Not even Secord, whose knowledge is impressively omnivorous, is certain why Chambers continued to hide his identity for so long. The decision was first taken, it seems, from a combination of prudence and shrewdness. He wanted to sell copies; he knew that his unscientific status would be held against him. Anonymity, while frequent in fiction, was unusual in the fields of biography and history. To be anonymous in this area was to attract attention and speculation. Guessing the author became part of the enterprise in a period that extended into decades during which Vestiges and its authorship were passionately discussed. An anonymous sequel, published in 1845, may have sold only 3,000 copies, but it achieved the more important goal for Chambers of keeping up interest.
Transmutation was the brand-new theory of creation that Chambers put on offer in his book, prefacing it with the bold, Frankenstein-led query: "In what way was the creation of animated beings effected?" The notion of endless ascent was not received with unanimous respect. Florence Nightingale joked that she found it impossible to climb down again, "and was obliged to go off as an angel". Darwin, scratching for fleas while he furtively studied the British Museum's copy, thought the geology and zoology were hopelessly amateur, although he agreed with the general conclusions. Philip Gosse, rejecting the idea that fossils indicated a pre-biblical history, wrote a response, Omphalos; 75% of the published copies were pulped through lack of demand. Vestiges continued to sell. Punch joked about a lonely book that is spurned at the door of every famous author who might have claimed it. Chambers, confronted with an inquiry about "that horrible book" and whether he had read it, kept his counsel.
It is hard to overpraise this book. Magnificently illustrated, erudite, thoughtful and stimulating, it has the added bonus of a wickedly subversive style. I liked, to single out a small example, Secord's throwaway description of a Punch journalist: "Douglas Jerrold was a known infidel (and ate his peas with a knife)." One of the illustrations shows a group of "advanced thinkers" chatting by the fire. The light catches their faces; they look intensely alive, and enthralled. Reading Victorian Sensation gives you the illusion, at least, of joining them.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The Evolution of Evolution
By John C. Landon
As Henry Drummond noted in 1883, "This is the age of the evolution of Evolution. All thoughts that the Evolutionist works with, all theories and generalizations, have themselves evolved and are now being evolved."
This remarkable work on the Vestiges of Robert Chambers is itself a history of the evolution of evolution, describing in wonderful detail the context of a book that perfectly fits Drummond's description. Springing from eighteenth century intimations, first theorized by Lamarck, the idea of evolution finally bursts into public consciousness with Chambers' Vestiges, whose sudden popularity, if not notoriety, made it one of the first modern bestsellers in an age of technological breakthroughs in communications, transport, and printing. Laying the groundwork for laters theories, it nonetheless is too often dismissed as pseudo-scientific when, in fact, the author was aware of certain aspects of the pre-Darwinian ideas of evolution that only now are resurfacing, after being shunted aside by the Darwin tide to come. The account in this work is an engaging hybrid of cultural history mixed into the biography of Chambers' book, and is useful for the student of evolution in its account of the social relations of science, from the gentleman scientist to the grub street popularizers, and indirectly brings to life the later relationship of Huxley to Darwin. The age of Darwin in which we live has made him the sole authority and source of a science of evolution and this distorts the facts, and has obscured the reputation of this and other books. Indeed part of the confusion over selectionist theories sprang from the need for Darwin to artificially separate himself from previous ideas of evolution, by a novelty of claims, since the idea of evolution had seen its foundations laid. It is good to remember the full tale. The reality is that Vestiges was the first thunderclap of the evolutionary idea, whose correct intimations mixed with much speculative confusion were filtered out of the positivist account of Darwin, that provoked its own firestorm of reactions, for not the least reason that it was as evolutionary as the work of Chambers, and did not truly foot the bill for a theory of descent.
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