Colonies, Cults and Evolution

David Amigoni is Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University.

• Introduction: literature, science and the hothouse of culture; 1. 'Symbolical of more important things': writing science, religion and colonialism in Coleridge's 'culture'; 2. 'Our origin, what matters it?': Wordsworth's excursive portmanteau of culture; 3. Charles Darwin's entanglements with stray colonists: cultivation and the species question; 4. 'In one another's being mingle': biology and the dissemination of 'culture' after 1859; 5. Samuel Butler's symbolic offensives: colonies and mechanical devices in the margins of evolutionary writing; 6. Edmund Gosse's cultural evolution: sympathetic magic, imitation, and contagious literature; Conclusion: culture's field, culture's vital garment; Bibliography.

Review of the hardback: 'In its range, complexity, and theoretical engagement, the study makes a rich contribution to both cultural studies and the growing body of science and literature studies that seeks to reconcile rather than oppose the insights of poststructuralism and evolutionary discourse. … Colonies, Cults and Evolution makes a stimulating, controversial, and hence very welcome addition to the growing corpus of Victorian science and literature studies.' David Amigoni, The British Society for Literature and Science