Frankenstein's Science

[Dave Monroe]

Frankenstein's Science
Experimentation and Discovery in Romantic Culture, 1780–1830

Imprint: Ashgate
Illustrations: Includes 6 b&w illustrations
Published: April 2008
Format: 234 x 156 mm
Extent: 240 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0-7546-5447-6
Price : £50.00 » Online: £45.00

Edited by Christa Knellwolf, Australian National University and Jane
Goodall, University of Western Sydney, Australia

Though Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has inspired a vast body of
criticism, there are no book-length studies that contextualise this
widely taught novel in contemporary scientific and literary debates.
The essays in this volume by leading writers in their fields provide
new historical scholarship into areas of science and pseudo-science
that generated fierce controversy in Mary Shelley's time: anatomy,
electricity, medicine, teratology, Mesmerism, quackery and
proto-evolutionary biology.

The collection embraces a multifaceted view of the exciting cultural
climate in Britain and Europe from 1780 to 1830. While Frankenstein is
all too often read as a cautionary tale of the inherent dangers of
uncontrolled scientific experimentation, the essays here take the
reader back to a period when experimenters and radical thinkers viewed
science as the harbinger of social innovation that would counter the
virulent conservative backlash following the French Revolution. The
collection will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars
specialising in Romanticism, cultural history, philosophy and the
history of science.

Contents: Introduction, Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall; Educating
Mary: women and scientific literature in the early 19th century,
Patricia Fara; The professor and the orang-outang: Mary Shelley as a
child reader, Judith Barbour; Geographic boundaries and inner space:
Frankenstein, scientific explorations and the quest for the absolute,
Christa Knellwolf; Animal experiments and anti-vivisection debates in
the 1820s, Anita Guerrini; Monstrous progeny: the teratological
tradition in science and literature, Melinda Cooper; Shadows of the
invisible world: Mesmer, Swedenborg and the spiritualist sciences,
Joan Kirkby; Electrical romanticism, Jane Goodall; Evolution,
revolution and Frankenstein's creature, Allan K. Hunter; Science as
spectacle: electrical showmanship in the English Enlightenment, Ian
Jackson; Collectors of nature's curiosities: science, popular culture
and the rise of natural history museums, Christine Cheater; The
nightmare of evolution: H.G. Wells, Percival Lowell and the legacies
of Frankenstein's science, Robert Markley; Bibliography; Index.

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&pageSubject=0&calcTitle=1&title_id=8329&edition_id=8878

Ch. 1, "Introduction"

http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Frankensteins_Science_Intro.pdf