Early Victorian Natural History: Reverent Empiricism and the Aesthetic of the Commonplace

Abstract

Chapter 2 considers early Victorian natural history in monograph and periodical form, tracing the growing importance of Gilbert White as a foundational example for early nineteenth-century natural history. The persistence of the theology of nature creates an “aesthetic of the commonplace” in the early Victorian moment. Natural histories focused on nature’s most quotidian aspects and were shot through with religious reverence for the natural world; the chapter demonstrates that they were a mode of realism that relied upon reverent empiricism to capture the truths they sought to represent. Reverent natural histories demonstrated the wonder in the everyday (especially small, commonplace, or insignificant) natural object. The chapter focuses on natural history monographs from the 1830s and two common object texts from the 1850s by James Drummond, Edward Jesse, J. L. Knapp, Rev. J. G. Wood, and Anne Pratt. The second half of the chapter focuses on natural history from The Saturday Magazine and The Penny Magazine in the 1830s and 1840s.