Download or read book The Romance of Victorian Natural History written by Lynn L. Merrill and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on how the enthusiasm for natural history in the nineteenth century produced characteristic ways of conceptualizing and visualizing the world--especially the Victorian fascination with particulars--as frequently seen in Victorian poetry, fiction, history, and textual studies. Arguing for natural history as an influential literary genre, Merrill examines the language and recurrent motifs in Victorian and some American natural history texts, as well as surveying the works of Philip Henry Gosse, Charles Kingsley, Hugh Miller, and John Burroughs.