The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy


Book Description

Oxford University Press Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP New Book Announcement Date 15/10/2019 Serial no. Title The Science of Starving Edition New product Subtitle Medicine, Political Economy, and the Victorian Novel Status Draft Technical Main edition ISBN 0198850034 ISBN 9780198850038 Pub. date 16/04/2020 Binding Hardback No.of vols/vol no. Price £50.00 Imprint OUP Terms AJ Bibliography No Royalty Yes Format 234x153 mm Joint IP Extent 224 pp Text colours 1 Illustrations Series/no. () Digital Formats Also available as an ebook for Retail & Institutions (Single User access) Also available online for Institutions only as part of Oxford Scholarship Online Author(s)/editor(s) Title Forename Surname Role Nationality Prof Andrew Mangham Author Affiliation Professor of Victorian Literature and Medical Humanities, University of Reading Responsible editor Jacqueline Norton Publishing History Assistant Commissioning editor Aimee Wright Agent Production editor Alannah Santra Rights Co-publisher Territorial World Original publisher Translation Available Date orig.edn pub/op Book club Available Translation? No Other sub.rights Available Orig.lang & title Classifications Main Literature Secondary Victorian literature and science Catalogue Section QB Other The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy is a reassessment of the languages and methodologies used, throughout the nineteenth century, for discussing extreme hunger in Britain. Set against the providentialism of conservative political economy, this study uncovers an emerging, dynamic way of describing literal starvation in medicine and physiology. No longer seen as a divine punishment for individual failings, starvation became, in the human sciences, a pathology whose horrific symptoms registered failings of state and statute. Providing new and historically-rich readings of the works of Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens, this book suggests that the realism we have come to associate with Victorian social problem fiction learned a vast amount from the empirical, materialist objectives of the medical sciences and that, within the mechanics of these intersections, we find important re-examinations of how we might think about this ongoing humanitarian issue.




The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy


Book Description

The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy is a reassessment of the languages and methodologies used, throughout the nineteenth century, for discussing extreme hunger in Britain. Set against the providentialism of conservative political economy, this study uncovers an emerging, dynamic way of describing literal starvation in medicine and physiology. No longer seen as a divine punishment for individual failings, starvation became, in the human sciences, a pathology whose horrific symptoms registered failings of state and statute. Providing new and historically-rich readings of the works of Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens, this book suggests that the realism we have come to associate with Victorian social problem fiction learned a vast amount from the empirical, materialist objectives of the medical sciences and that, within the mechanics of these intersections, we find important re-examinations of how we might think about this ongoing humanitarian issue.




Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism


Book Description

Bringing together neo-Victorian and medievalism scholars in dialogue with each other for the first time, this collection of essays foregrounds issues common to both fields. The Victorians reimagined the medieval era and post-Victorian medievalism repurposes received nineteenth century tropes, as do neo-Victorian texts. For example, aesthetic movements such as Arts and Crafts, which looked for inspiration in the medieval era, are echoed by steampunk in its return to Victorian dress and technology. Issues of gender identity, sexuality, imperialism and nostalgia arise in both neo-Victorianism and medievalism, and analysis of such texts is enriched and expanded by the interconnections between the two fields represented in this groundbreaking collection.




We Are All Monsters


Book Description

How the monsters of nineteenth-century literature and science came to define us. “Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?” In We Are All Monsters, Andrew Mangham offers a fresh interpretation of this question uttered by Frankenstein’s creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel in an expansive exploration of how nineteenth-century literature and science recast the monster as vital to the workings of nature and key to unlocking the knowledge of all life-forms and processes. Even as gothic literature and freak shows exploited an abiding association between abnormal bodies and horror, amazement, or failure, the development of monsters in the ideas and writings of this period showed the world to be dynamic, varied, plentiful, transformative, and creative. In works ranging from Comte de Buffon’s interrogations of humanity within natural history to Hugo de Vries’s mutation theory, and from Shelley’s artificial man to fin de siècle notions of body difference, Mangham expertly traces a persistent attempt to understand modern subjectivity through a range of biological and imaginary monsters. In a world that hides monstrosity behind theoretical and cultural representations that reinscribe its otherness, this enlightened book shows how innovative nineteenth-century thinkers dismantled the fictive idea of normality and provided a means of thinking about life in ways that check the reflexive tendency to categorize and divide.




The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of the Victorian Novel contributes substantially to a thriving scholarly field by offering new approaches to familiar topics as well as essays on topics often overlooked.




Joseph Babinski


Book Description

"In this volume, two French physicians, Jacques Philippon and Jacques Poirier, analyze Joseph Babinski's great scientific achievements, explore his unique family history, and publish for the first time a complete bibliography of his publications." "This book chronicles his family's emigration from Poland to France, his tutelage and early career under great teachers such as Alfred Vulpian, Victor Cornil, and Jean-Martin Charcot at the Hopital de la Salpetriere in Paris, his methods and observations during his 17 years as department head at La Pitie, as well as the close and unique relationship with his brother Henri. Finally, Babinski's life and times can be accessed in one book."--BOOK JACKET.




The Arsenic Century


Book Description

Arsenic is rightly infamous as the poison of choice for Victorian murderers. Yet the great majority of fatalities from arsenic in the nineteenth century came not from intentional poisoning, but from accident. Kept in many homes for the purpose of poisoning rats, the white powder was easily mistaken for sugar or flour and often incorporated into the family dinner. It was also widely present in green dyes, used to tint everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing (it was arsenic in old lace that was the danger). Whether at home amidst arsenical curtains and wallpapers, at work manufacturing these products, or at play swirling about the papered, curtained ballroom in arsenical gowns and gloves, no one was beyond the poison's reach. Drawing on the medical, legal, and popular literature of the time, The Arsenic Century paints a vivid picture of its wide-ranging and insidious presence in Victorian daily life, weaving together the history of its emergence as a nearly inescapable household hazard with the sordid story of its frequent employment as a tool of murder and suicide. And ultimately, as the final chapter suggests, arsenic in Victorian Britain was very much the pilot episode for a series of environmental poisoning dramas that grew ever more common during the twentieth century and still has no end in sight.




Houses of Madness


Book Description

'Houses of Madness' is a history of asylums of colonial Bengal in the 19th century. It explores these institutions through several phases that not only involved changes in medical treatment and its interpretation, but also the question of spatial distribution within these institutions.




Victorian Print Media


Book Description

Publisher description




Narrating Trauma


Book Description

Draws on current theories of trauma to examine the prehistory of those psychic and somatic responses to trauma now known as PTSD and their influence on Victorian fiction.