Abstract
The focus of this essay is Florence Marryat's sensational exploration of the late nineteenth-century vivisection debate. Marryat's contribution to the formation of popular scientific awareness through her exploration of scientific debate in her fiction has been hitherto unaddressed. One of the reasons for this might be that she dismissed herself as a writer of “ephemeral fiction”. However, Marryat has recently undergone a renaissance of academic interest, and this essay will study An Angel of Pity (1898) in conjunction with medical writing and other literary production of the period in an attempt to assess her dissemination of key arguments from the vivisection debate to her vast readership. An Angel of Pity deals graphically with the realities of vivisection. Ostensibly a love story, this novel details a relationship that is very nearly destroyed because of a scientific commitment to the practice of vivisection. By discussing the use of scientific debate as a narratorial device in nineteenth-century popular fiction, this essay hopes to contribute to an understanding of this very contentious topic and its impact on popular culture.
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