“Buckland tries to get inside the heads of the Britons who were writing into existence a scientific geology while developing a great literary form: the nineteenth-century novel. She succeeds triumphantly.”
“Novel Science is a significant and altogether engaging contribution to the field of history of science–meets–literary study. Adelene Buckland’s fresh and rigorous work takes seriously her claim that ‘if science was literature in the nineteenth century, it is the premise of this book that literature was science too.’ In committing itself to the fluidity between these discursive realms—without reducing science to just another narrative, or literature to a repository of scientific references—Novel Science takes up the further challenge of thinking in detail about the practice of geology. This is a major new argument that should be read not only by historians of science but also by literary critics.”
“Novel Science is one of the most exciting and challenging contributions yet made to the booming field of science and literature studies. Combining meticulous and original historical research with groundbreaking readings of nineteenth-century novels and geological texts, it will surprise and delight anyone with an interest in this period, literary or historical. Adelene Buckland offers both a compelling reassessment of the Victorian novel in itself and a reframing of science’s place within literary culture, demonstrating that geology played a fundamental and formative role in the writing of fiction. Admirers of Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plots and George Levine’s Darwin and the Novelists now have a new classic to contend with.”
