This volume is unique in its focus on cross-fertilisation in the arts, on very specific exploration of liminal spaces, and on the representation of marginal figures in writing. The essays here grew out of the Borders and Margins colloquium, held at Leeds Trinity University, UK, in April 2010, which was the fourth in a series of colloquia. This collection, moreover, contributes to a growing area of scholarship which explores Anglo-French interactions and exchanges. In choosing the term “liminality”, the editors are aware of its nuanced implications, allowing suggestions both of the initial and the transitional. The contributors here are academics from the fields of literature, history and art history, and their essays cover art history, literature, cultural history, the arts, and faith. Altogether, this collection evokes a sense of temporal shift, in that changes in values and focus are uncovered as the nineteenth century progresses. Some have an ekphrastic quality, showing how pictures can have a narrative, and how pictures, as well as texts, can be encoded with moral and social interpretations. Close scrutiny is applied to different kinds of texts, fiction and non-fiction, and the purposes for which they were produced. This book will appeal to scholars and academics interested in a wide range of cross-categorisational transactions in nineteenth-century Britain. It will be of interest to scholars of Victorian culture, and English nineteenth-century literature and art, particularly in terms of genre, as well as to academics interested in the development of social, personal, and national identities.

This text explores how science became increasingly important in 19th century British culture and how the systematic study of insects permitted entomologists to engage with the most pressing questions of Victorian times: the nature of God, mind, and governance, and the origins of life.

2010 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine Charles Darwin and his revolutionary ideas inspired pundits the world over to put pen to paper. In this unique dictionary of quotations, Darwin scholar Thomas Glick presents fascinating observations about Darwin and his ideas from such notable figures as P. T. Barnum, Anton Chekhov, Mahatma Gandhi, Carl Jung, Martin Luther King, Mao Tse-tung, Pius IX, Jules Verne, and Virginia Woolf. What was it about Darwin that generated such widespread interest? His Origin of Species changed the world. Naturalists, clerics, politicians, novelists, poets, musicians, economists, and philosophers alike could not help but engage his theory of evolution. Whatever their view of his theory, however, those who met Darwin were unfailingly charmed by his modesty, kindness, honesty, and seriousness of purpose. This diverse collection drawn from essays, letters, novels, short stories, plays, poetry, speeches, and parodies demonstrates how Darwin’s ideas permeated all areas of thought. The quotations trace a broad conversation about Darwin across great distances of time and space, revealing his profound influence on the great thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

"Nothing yet published about her so totally contradicts the legend of Virginia Woolf.... [This] is a first chance to meet the writer in her own unguarded words and to observe the root impulses of her art without the distractions of a commentary" (New York Times). Edited and with a Preface by Anne Olivier Bell; Introduction by Quentin Bell; Index.