Jeremy Parrott

Three Dialogues Revisited

Victorian Nonfiction Prose

The Victorian Era saw a revolution in communication technology. Millions of texts emerged from a complex network of writers, editors, publishers and reviewers, to shape and be shaped by the dynamics of a rapidly industrializing society. Many of these works offer fundamental, often surprising insights into Victorian society. Why, for example, did the innocuously titled Essays and Reviews (1860) trigger public outrage? How did Eliza Lynn Linton become the first salaried woman journalist in England? What is "table-talk"? Critical approaches to Victorian prose have long focused on a few canonical writers. Recent scholarship has recognized a wide diversity of practitioners, forms and modes of dissemination. Presented in accessible A-Z format, this literary companion reinstates nonfiction as a principal vehicle of knowledge and debate in Victorian Britain.

Darwinism as Religion

'Darwinism as Religion' argues that the theory of evolution given by Charles Darwin in the 19th-century has always functioned as much as a secular form of religion as anything purely scientific. Through the words of novelists and poets, Michael Ruse argues that Darwin took us from the secure world of Christian faith into a darker, less friendly world of chance and lack of meaning.