This edited collection aims to examine the popularisation of science for children in Britain and France from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the Victorian period. It compares and contrasts for the first time popular science works published at the same time in the two countries, focusing both on non-fictional and fictional texts. Starting when children’s literature emerged as a genre to the end of the nineteenth century it addresses the ways in which popular science for children engaged with wider debates and issues, concerning such topics as gender or religion. Each individual essays brings home how children’s literature revealed contemporary tensions which professional scientists confronted. The wide range of scientific topics examined, from physics and astronomy to natural history and anthropology, offers a large spectrum of types of popular science works for children.

Spanning over 2 centuries, James Gregory's Mercy and British Culture, 1760 -1960 provides a wide-reaching yet detailed overview of the concept of mercy in British cultural history. While there are many histories of justice and punishment, mercy has been a neglected element despite recognition as an important feature of the 18th-century criminal code. Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960 looks first at mercy's religious and philosophical aspects, its cultural representations and its embodiment. It then looks at large-scale mobilisation of mercy discourses in Ireland, during the French Revolution, in the British empire, and in warfare from the American war of independence to the First World War. This study concludes by examining mercy's place in a twentieth century shaped by total war, atomic bomb, and decolonisation.