In this title, first published in 1984, Peter Morton argues that in late Victorian Britain a group of novelists and essayists quite consciously sought and found ideas in post-Darwinian biology that were susceptible to imaginative transformation. The period between 1860 and 1900 was a time of great confusion in biology; the natural selection hypothesis was in retreat before its acute critics, and no extension of evolutionary theory to human affairs was too bizarre to attract its quota of enthusiasts. Writers capitalised on this prevailing uncertainty and used it to their own artistic or polemic ends. A fascinating and interdisciplinary title, this reissue will interest students of late Victorian literature, as well as historians of biological theory between The Origin of Species and Mendel.

In this title, first published in 1984, Peter Morton argues that in late Victorian Britain a group of novelists and essayists quite consciously sought and found ideas in post-Darwinian biology that were susceptible to imaginative transformation. The period between 1860 and 1900 was a time of great confusion in biology; the natural selection hypothesis was in retreat before its acute critics, and no extension of evolutionary theory to human affairs was too bizarre to attract its quota of enthusiasts. Writers capitalised on this prevailing uncertainty and used it to their own artistic or polemic ends. A fascinating and interdisciplinary title, this reissue will interest students of late Victorian literature, as well as historians of biological theory between The Origin of Species and Mendel.

The Diary of a Nobody, the spoof diary of Charles Pooter, a London clerk, first appeared as a book in 1892 and has never been out of print since. The hilariously trivial doings of the accident-prone Pooter, his wife Carrie and their troublesome son Lupin have inspired many writers since, including the authors of Bridget Jones's Diary and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. The satirical novelist Evelyn Waugh called it "the funniest book in the world." This enduring classic of Victorian social comedy is now available in a newly edited Broadview edition. This edition includes a critical introduction, comprehensive notes on the many historical allusions in the text, and a wide selection of relevant contemporary materials on the clerk's life, suburbia, spiritualism, and domestic economy. A selection of Weedon Grossmith's original illustrations also accompanies the novel.