Book contents
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Natural History, the Theology of Nature, and the Novel
- Chapter 1 Reverent Natural History, the Sketch, and the Novel: Modes of English Realism in White, Mitford, and Austen
- Chapter 2 Early Victorian Natural History: Reverent Empiricism and the Aesthetic of the Commonplace
- Chapter 3 The Formal Realism of Reverent Natural History: Tide-pools, Aquaria, and the Seashore Natural Histories of P. H. Gosse and G. H. Lewes
- Chapter 4 Reverence at the Seashore: Seashore Natural History, Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago (1857), and Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature (1855)
- Chapter 5 Seeing the Divine in the Commonplace: George Eliot’s Paranaturalist Realism (1856–1859)
- Chapter 6 Elizabeth Gaskell’s Everyday: Reverent Form and Natural Theology in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1866)
- Epilogue Barsetshire via Selborne: Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chapter 4 - Reverence at the Seashore: Seashore Natural History, Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago (1857), and Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature (1855)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2019
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- The Divine in the Commonplace
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Natural History, the Theology of Nature, and the Novel
- Chapter 1 Reverent Natural History, the Sketch, and the Novel: Modes of English Realism in White, Mitford, and Austen
- Chapter 2 Early Victorian Natural History: Reverent Empiricism and the Aesthetic of the Commonplace
- Chapter 3 The Formal Realism of Reverent Natural History: Tide-pools, Aquaria, and the Seashore Natural Histories of P. H. Gosse and G. H. Lewes
- Chapter 4 Reverence at the Seashore: Seashore Natural History, Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago (1857), and Margaret Gatty’s Parables from Nature (1855)
- Chapter 5 Seeing the Divine in the Commonplace: George Eliot’s Paranaturalist Realism (1856–1859)
- Chapter 6 Elizabeth Gaskell’s Everyday: Reverent Form and Natural Theology in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) and Wives and Daughters (1866)
- Epilogue Barsetshire via Selborne: Anthony Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
Chapter 4 focuses on Charles Kingsley and Margaret Gatty, two mid-Victorian figures who wrote in multiple genres, including novels, parables, and seashore natural histories. The chapter centers on Kingsley’s novel of English provincial realism Two Years Ago (1857) and Gatty’s Parables of Nature (1855-71), both of which offer a clear discursive bridge between natural history and imaginative fictions at mid-century. Two Years Ago is the lost link between the more canonical provincial realism of Jane Austen’s Emma and those of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. The chapter considers the novel alongside Kingsley’s seashore natural history Glaucus: The Wonders of the Shore (1855). The chapter analyzes a section of Gatty’s Parables from Nature (in which a zoophyte, a seaweed, and a bookworm converse) alongside her British Sea-Weeds (1863). These texts explore the thematic and formal connections between reverent natural history and fiction at mid-century.
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- The Divine in the CommonplaceReverent Natural History and the Novel in Britain, pp. 145 - 167Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019