Product Description

Fiction or philosophy, profound knowledge or shocking heresy? When "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" was published anonymously in 1844, it sparked one of the greatest sensations of the Victorian era. Thousands of readers were spellbound by its startling vision - an account of the world that extended from the formation of the solar system to the spiritual destiny of humanity. The book was banned, it was damned, it was hailed as the gospel for a new age. In this cultural history, James Secord uses the story of "Vestiges" to create a panoramic portrait of life in the early industrial era from the perspective of its readers. We join apprentices in a factory town as they debate the consequences of an evolutionary ancestry. We listen as Prince Albert reads aloud to Queen Victoria from a book that preachers denounced as blasphemy vomited from the mouth of Satan. And we watch as Charles Darwin turns its pages in the flea-ridden British Museum library, fearful for the fate of his own unpublished theory of evolution. Using secret letters, Secord reveals how "Vestiges" was written and how the anonymity of its author was maintained for 40 years. He also takes us behind the scenes to a bustling world of publishers, printers, and booksellers to show how the furor over the book reflected the emerging industrial economy of print.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1040781 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"What a thing a book is!": Elizabeth Barrett's celebrated exclamation sets the tone of Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", James A Secord's spectacular contribution to the cultural history of reading. On the one hand, this is the story of a book. Published anonymously in 1844, Vestiges, was a "sensation": a book about evolution as "readable as a romance, based on the latest findings of science". On the other hand, Secord is uncovering what he describes as "the role of reading in creating the first mass industrial society": the thousands of encounters with Vestiges that he traces through letters, diaries, newspapers, reviews, journals. Vestiges was the subject of conversation: an apparently mundane observation that Secord turns into an opportunity to consider the place of "conversation about books" in civic life, the shift in ideas about what it means to read, and talk about, books in a society coming to terms with the "outpouring of print". The topic of evolution is crucial to this discussion; in part, Victorian Sensation is an exploration of how evolution becomes and remains so pivotal in public debate as a means of addressing the forms of social and cultural conflict that characterised the Victorian era (class and gender, religion and science are the common themes). It's an era of transformation conjured through Secord's impeccable scholarship and compelling prose: Victorian Sensation is a fascinating, and remarkably readable book. --Vicky Lebeau

Customer Reviews

Science and Understanding
James A Secord's "Victorian Sensation - The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" is a gem, combining an extensive lifetime's knowledge of Victorian society with the history of science.

The Vestiges were published anonymously by Robert Chambers in 1844 to an audience receptive to explanations of creation not based on revealed religion. It was published too at a time when Victorian society considered itself as a leader of progressive thought and action, embraced such nonsense as phrenology (which continues in highbrow and lowbrow intellect) but which remained averse to the implications of non-religious opinion because of the secular and atheistic impact of the French Revolution on political radicalism and social stability.

It is not often realised that the Vestiges outsold the Origins of Species by the thousands drawing as it did on the novel, the encyclopaedia, mass circulation journalism and combing readable narrative with scientific explanation. It came at a time when literacy and readership was spreading through cheap publications and formed a key ingredient in the philosophy of self improvement that was at the heart of the radical political movement.

Secord expresses this succinctly, "A vengeful God who demanded retribution had less appeal for a cosmopolitan society with a rapidly advancing economy; speculation in science, as in the market, was no longer condemned as sinful." The railways brought Sunday work for the plebs while the middle class attended church to atone for the rest of the week spent in pursuit of gain and pleasure.

Much of what Darwin expounded in the Origins of Species can be found in the Vestiges, natural selection being the missing link which Darwin proclaimed. Secord explores why it is that the Vestiges, which made such a sensational impact ( even the different meanings of "sensational" are discussed at length) on publication, is far less well known than Darwin's Origins of Species.

Part of the answer lies in the development of expertise, the redrawing of the boundaries between aristocrats, gentlemen and churchmen pursuing natural theology and scientists pursuing the destruction of theology. In the environment of mid-Victorian splendour the Vestiges became the work of an amateur overtaken by the professionalism of the all conquering scientists offering inductive reasoning as fact. Darwinism provided the rationale for empire, racism and laissez faire, the Vestiges became an embarrassment.

The beauty of this book lies in its understanding that reconstructing history should be done in terms faithful to the time. The famous Oxford debate in 1860 between Wilberforce and Huxley is correctly identified as a minor incident raised to mythical dimensions for political purposes. Darwinism itself was only revived in the 1930's and raised to its own mythical status in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Secord observes that many Victorians, including Darwin, did not keep books on the shelf. The ripped them up and used them as work tools. Secord's book certainly does not deserve that fate, notwithstanding the frequent grammatical error of inserting commas before "and". It should rest on the shelf and referred to frequently as the superb reference work it will become for anyone interested in the real history of the origins of the present debate on evolution. Buy it.