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Tag Archives: Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin and the Frankenstein “Mistake”
Mary Shelley refers directly to Erasmus Darwin in the “Introduction” to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein. She says: Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During … Continue reading
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Tagged Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
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Temple of Nature (1803)
Frontispiece from Erasmus Darwin’s The Temple of Nature (1803). The image suggests the goddess of poetry pulling aside the veil to reveal the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus, goddess of wild nature. Anthropologists have recently claimed that Artemis’s chest was … Continue reading
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Tagged Erasmus Darwin, evolution, poetry, science
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The Anxiety of Species: Toward a Romantic Natural History
[first published in The Wordsworth Circle 28:3 (1997): 130-36] We sometimes think that the concept of mutable species burst on the world like a thunderclap with the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. So great was Darwin’s own … Continue reading
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Tagged Blake, Charles Darwin, ecology, Erasmus Darwin, natural history, poetry, Romanticism, Shelley
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Backgrounds: From Aristotle to Erasmus Darwin
For the ancients, mythology suggested powerful interconnections among the natural, the human, and the imaginary. Gods were like humans, humans were like animals, animals were like plants, plants were like humans, and vice versa. Spontaneous generation, parthenogenesis by fire, impregnation … Continue reading
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Tagged Aristotle, astronomy, Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, myth, poetry, science
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Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born near Nottingham on December 12, 1731. He was educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh and settled first near Lichfield and later at Derby. A remarkable polymath, he became a best selling poet during … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Historians
Tagged Erasmus Darwin, evolution, Frankenstein, plants, poetry, science, sexuality
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Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was perhaps the naturalist most responsible for altering humanity’s view of nature (and human nature) over the past two centuries. Darwin’s main idea was not new, nor was it complete, but his belief that species evolved over time … Continue reading
Posted in Natural Historians
Tagged Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, science
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the author of one of the most widely read and often redacted novels of the past two centuries. Frankenstein; or, … Continue reading
Posted in Literary Figures
Tagged Erasmus Darwin, fiction, Frankenstein, Gothic, prose, Shelley, women
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