Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Illustrations vii
4. Acknowledgements ix
5. Notes on Contributors x
6. Introduction 1
7. From Popular Science to Contemplation: The Clouds of The Cloud of Unknowing 13
8. ‘dreams and plain dotage’: The Value of The Birth of Mankind (1540–1654) 35
9. Natural Rights and Natural History in Anna Barbauld and Mary Wollstonecraft 53
10. George Eliot, Geometry and Gender 72
11. On the Back of the Light Waves: ‘Novel Possibilities in the “Fourth Dimension” 91
12. Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’, Ireland, and Diseased Vision 111
13. Evolution, Literary History and Science Fiction 131
14. ‘The luxury of storytelling’: Science, Literature and Cultural Contest in Ian McEwan’s Narrative Practice 151
15. Index 169