New Book: Science in Wonderland: The scientific fairy tales of Victorian Britain by Melanie Keene

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Science in Wonderland: The scientific fairy tales of Victorian Britain by Melanie Keene was released earlier this year in both the US and the UK.

Book description:

• Presents a new perspective on Victorian scientific discoveries and inventions
• Includes a range of Victorian scientific fairy-tales and stories
• Looks at why fairies and their tales were chosen as an appropriate new form for capturing and presenting scientific and technological knowledge to young audiences
• Examines a range of scientific subjects, from palaeontology to entomology to astronomy

In Victorian Britain an array of writers captured the excitement of new scientific discoveries, and enticed young readers and listeners into learning their secrets, by converting introductory explanations into quirky, charming, and imaginative fairy-tales; forces could be fairies, dinosaurs could be dragons, and looking closely at a drop of water revealed a soup of monsters.

Science in Wonderland explores how these stories were presented and read. Melanie Keene introduces and analyses a range of Victorian scientific fairy-tales, from nursery classics such as The Water-Babies to the little-known Wonderland of Evolution, or the story of insect lecturer Fairy Know-a-Bit. In exploring the ways in which authors and translators - from Hans Christian Andersen and Edith Nesbit to the pseudonymous 'A.L.O.E.' and 'Acheta Domestica' - reconciled the differing demands of factual accuracy and fantastical narratives, Keene asks why the fairies and their tales were chosen as an appropriate new form for capturing and presenting scientific and technological knowledge to young audiences. Such stories, she argues, were an important way in which authors and audiences criticised, communicated, and celebrated contemporary scientific ideas, practices, and objects.

Readership: Readers of the history of science, popular science, Victoriana, and the history of children's literature. It will also be of interest for historians of science and cultural historians.

Melanie Keene, Graduate Tutor and Research Fellow, Homerton College, Cambridge

Melanie Keene is a historian of science for children, based at Homerton College, Cambridge. She has published several academic and popular articles on scientific books and objects from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, on topics from candles, pebbles, or cups of tea, to board games, toy sets, and model dinosaurs.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Nothing But Facts?
1: Once Upon a Time
2: Real Fairy Folk
3: Domestic Fairylands
4: Wonderlands of Evolution
5: Through Magic Glasses
6: Technological Marvels
Conclusion: Stranger Than Fiction
Notes
References
Index