A01=Ralph O'Connor
Author_Ralph O'Connor
bible
biblical literalists
blackmail
britain
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
Category=PDX
Category=RBG
clergymen
deep time
dinosaurs
diorama
england
entertainment
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
fossils
gender
geohistory
geology
hugh miller
john martin
literature
lyell
mammoths
nonfiction
past worlds
poetry
popular science
prophets
religion
satan
sea dragons
sensation
spectacle
television
urban
victorian
william buckland
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780226616681
- Weight: 1162g
- Dimensions: 19 x 26mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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At the turn of the nineteenth century, geology - and its claims that the earth had a long and colorful prehuman history - was widely dismissed as dangerous nonsense. But just fifty years later, it was the most celebrated of Victorian sciences. Ralph O'Connor tracks the astonishing growth of geology's prestige in Britain, exploring how a new geohistory far more alluring than the standard six days of Creation was assembled and sold to the wider Biblereading public. Savvy science writer, O'Connor shows, marketed spectacular visions of past worlds, piquing the public imagination with glimpses of man-eating mammoths, talking dinosaurs, and sea-dragons spawned by Satan himself. These authors - including men of science, women, clergymen, biblical literalists, hack writers, blackmailers, and prophets - borrowed freely from the Bible, modern poetry, and the urban entertainment industry, creating new forms of literature in order to transport their readers into a vanished and alien past. In exploring the use of poetry and spectacle in the promotion of popular science, O'Connor proves that geology's success owed much to the literary techniques of its authors.
An innovative blend of the history of science, literary criticism, book history, and visual culture, "The Earth on Show" rethinks the relationship between geology and literature in the nineteenth century.
Ralph O'Connor is a lecturer in Irish-Scottish studies in the Department of History at the University of Aberdeen.
