An innovative study of how the Victorians used books, portraits, fairies, microscopes, and dollhouses to imagine miniature worlds beyond perception In 1856, Elizabeth Gaskell discovered a trove of handmade miniature books that were created by Charlotte and Branwell Brontë in their youth and that, as Gaskell later recalled, “contained an immense amount of manuscript, in an inconceivably small space.” Far from being singular wonders, these two-inch volumes were part of a wide array of miniature marvels that filled the drawers and pockets of middle- and upper-class Victorians. Victorian miniatures pushed the boundaries of scientific knowledge, mechanical production, and human perception. To touch a miniature was to imagine what lay beyond these boundaries. In Worlds Beyond, Laura Forsberg reads major works of fiction by George Eliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll alongside minor genres like the doll narrative, fairy science tract, and thumb Bible. Forsberg guides readers through microscopic science, art history, children’s culture, and book production to show how Victorian miniatures offered scripts for expansive fantasies of worlds beyond perception.

This book describes the radical shift in the study of economic science; where arguing with words was replaced by reasoning with mathematical models.

Popular Science gives our readers the information and tools to improve their technology and their world. The core belief that Popular Science and our readers share: The future is going to be better, and science and technology are the driving forces that will help make it better.

What are the characteristic features of avatar-based singleplayer videogames, from Super Mario Bros. to Grand Theft Auto? Rune Klevjer examines this question with a particular focus on issues of fictionality and realism, and their relation to cinema and Virtual Reality. Through close-up analysis and philosophical discussion, Klevjer argues that avatar-based gaming is a distinctive and dominant form of virtual self-embodiment in digital culture. This book is a revised edition of Rune Klevjer's pioneering work from 2007, featuring a new introduction by the author and afterword by Stephan Günzel, Jörg Sternagel, and Dieter Mersch.

Explores the way middle-class American women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries added meaning to their lives through their "domestic amusements"--leisure pursuits that took place in and were largely focused on the home. Women elaborated on their everyday tasks and responsibilities with these amusements thus cultivating a heightened, aesthetically charged "saturated" state and created self-contained enchanted worlds.

Miniaturisation is the creation of small objects that resemble larger ones, usually, but not always, for purposes different to those of the larger original object. Worlds in Miniaturebrings together researchers working across various regions, time periods and disciplines to explore the subject of miniaturisation as a material culture technique. It offers original contribution to the field of miniaturisation through its broad geographical scope, interdisciplinary approach, and deep understanding of miniatures and their diverse contexts. Beginning with an introduction by the editors, which offers one possible guide to studying and comparing miniatures, the following chapters include studies of miniature Neolithic stone circles on Exmoor, Ancient Egyptian miniature assemblages, miniaturisation under colonialism as practiced by the Makah People of Washington State, miniature surf boats from India, miniaturised contemporary tourist art of the Warao people of Venezuela, and dioramas on display in the Science Museum. Interspersing the chapters are interviews with miniature-makers, including two miniature boat-builders at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall and a freelance architectural model-maker. Professor Susanne Küchler concludes the volume with a theoretical study summarising the current state of miniaturisation as a research discipline. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume makes it suitable reading for anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and artists, and for researchers in related fields across the social sciences.