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9781472419545

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Reviews

'Drawing on a wide range of research in literature and the history of science, Martin Priestman's in-depth exploration of Darwin's poetry is important not only for its illumination of Darwinian scholarship, but also for its use of Darwin to reassess the relationships between the British Enlightenment and the Romantic period'.- Patricia Fara, Clare College, Cambridge, author of Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science, and Serendipity

'Drawing on a wide range of research in literature and the history of science, Martin Priestman's in-depth exploration of Darwin's poetry is important not only for its illumination of Darwinian scholarship, but also for its use of Darwin to reassess the relationships between the British Enlightenment and the Romantic period'. Patricia Fara, Clare College, Cambridge, author of Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science, and Serendipity 'Martin Priestman's new book is an authoritative and wide-ranging survey on the place of Darwin as a significant writer and poet in the Enlightenment and Romantic eras'. Desmond King-Hele, FRS, author of Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement '...[A] thought-provoking read.' Anglisik 'The results of this examination are fascinating. Darwin has long been recognized as an intriguing man with polymath interests, as a physician, an inventor, a radical in his politics, and a poet ... Darwin's poems are lengthy, written in heroic couplets, and are perhaps not best suited to our modern tastes, but Priestman gives a good account of them and the ideas they communicate. He provides an admirably clear summary of the poems' content and in doing so has had to master an encyclopedic range of knowledge himself.' Times Literary Supplement '... [A] comprehensive, exciting, and truly indispensible achievement. Priestman has given us a fresh, thoroughgoing literary critical image of Darwin's oeuvre: poetic and scientific in inextricable measure, The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin bristles with insights and fuel for future work, and demonstrates, by compendious scholarship and lively example, the now elusive delights of Darwin's late-Enlightenment style.' Review of English Studies 'The Poetry of Erasmus Dmwin is a welcome addition to a growing body of scholarship, comprising Dr. Darwin's poetic works as a whole. ... readers can trust [Preiestman's] leadership and enjoy his enthusiasm even as they admire his scholarship.' Wordsworth Circle 'This book is an important contribution to scholarship in several disciplines, and is especially recommended to Blakeans of every kind I can think of, not so much for what we can learn about Blake directly but for what we can learn about the broad intellectual milieu of the turn of that century. It is clearly written, energetic, witty, and carefully edited.' Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 'Priestman's space-time schema underpins an illuminating and provocative study of the social, political and epistemological implications of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century patterns of thought ... The book is also augmented by extensive engagement with pertinent scholarship in-text, references to which are copiously footnoted and (most helpfully) indexed. All this adds up to a soon-to-be-standard work of reference in the field of Erasmus Darwin studies, and a volume that warrants careful consideration among scholars of Enlightenment and early Romantic culture.' British Journal for the History of Science 'One of Priestman's most compelling achievements in this book is to show us how a writer best known for his thoughts about time is best thought about in terms of space ... reading Priestman, it is easy to be convinced that we have been missing, as he himself puts it, 'an astonishingly inventive poet'.' British Society for Literature and Science

Author Information

Martin Priestman is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Romanticism at the University of Roehampton, UK.

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