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Configurations 10.1 (2002) 195-198



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James A. Secord. Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2000. xix + 624 pp., illus. $35.00.

Victorian Sensation is an excellent book, and James Secord has done it again! In 1986 Secord, reader in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, published the exceptionally detailed Controversy in Victorian [End Page 195] Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute (Princeton: Princeton University Press), wherein he brilliantly examined the controversy between Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) and Robert Murchison (1792-1871) within the context of Victorian times. In 1986, he wrote: "Geology enjoyed a remarkable popular success in Victorian England" (p. 14), and he pointed out that

geology, like the other elements of natural history, had powerful supports from the social order of nineteenth-century England: for all its internal quarrels, classificatory stratigraphy spoke to the public as a science that established position and place. The fundamental appeal of such an activity for a society increasingly conscious of class and an elite troubled by dissent from the "lower" orders is unmistakable. (pp. 33-34)

In Victorian Sensation, Secord continues his masterful contextualization process, focusing on the background, reception, and impact of Vestiges of the Natural History ofCreation by Robert Chambers (1802-1871). First published anonymously in 1844, Vestiges went through eleven editions before Chambers's death in 1871, and Chambers was eventually identified as the author in the twelfth edition of 1884. Secord describes Vestiges as a "literary hybrid" (p. 522), and well it might have been, considering some of the "potential" authors who Secord points out were credited with the 1844 anonymous edition: Ada Lovelace, William Makepeace Thackeray, Harriet Martineau, Charles Lyell, and even Charles Darwin (pp. 20-21). Secord not only analyzes the impact of the 1844 Vestiges but also examines the way in which books are read by individuals at various points in time. He describes "popular publishing" as well as "scientific practice," and the book is divided into (roughly) four equal sections: "Romance of Creation," "Geographies of Reading," "Spiritual Journeys," and "Futures of Science"—each of which is a delight to read.

In 1989 Secord pointed out that "Chambers had neither the secure position in society nor the scientific reputation that allowed Darwin to put his name on the title page of the Origin of Species [of 1859]" (James A. Secord, "Behind the Veil: Robert Chambers and Vestiges," in History, Humanity and Evolution: Essays for John C. Greene, ed. James Moore [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], p. 186). While the names of Darwin (1809-1882) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) are probably familiar to readers, why not Chambers? Chambers's name was eventually associated with Vestiges, but why are neither he nor the book remembered? In Victorian Sensation, Secord asks: "How is it then, that books exercise their power?" (p. 39), and he answers by explaining and interpreting Vestiges within the context of the nineteenth-century world. He discusses academic institutions, political affiliations, cities, publishers, and individual readers ("from leisured gentlemen to commercial hacks"), as well as others along the way (including readers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean) (p. 40).

In linking Vestiges with probably the best-known scientific name of the nineteenth century, Secord writes "Darwin probably learned about Vestiges from an advertisement. . . . Made a note to read it." He continues: "In many ways, Darwin had been scooped: here was a book advocating natural origin for a species in a framework of material causation and universal law. Only that summer [of 1844] he had outlined his own theory in a manuscript essay, which when copied out occupied 231 pages" (p. 429). In looking at the influence of Vestiges on Alfred Russel Wallace, Secord notes that in 1847 the following occurred: "Convinced that evolutionary theory of Vestiges needed to be tested, Alfred Russel Wallace abandoned surveying, became a commercial collector, and traveled for most of the [End Page 196] next decade. . . . it...

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