Victorians and the Prehistoric: Tracks to a Lost World

by Michael Freeman

As the Victorians excavated the earth to create canals and railways in the early part of the nineteenth century, geological discoveries brought to light new narratives of the prehistoric, ideas that resounded in British society, art, and literature of the period. This engaging and generously illustrated book explores the Victorian fascination with all things prehistoric.

Michael Freeman shows how men and women were both energized and unsettled by the realization that the formation of the earth over hundreds of millions of years and Darwin’s theories about the origins of life contradicted what they had read in the Bible. He describes the rock and fossil collecting craze that emerged, the sources of inspiration and imagery discovered by writers and artists, and the new importance of geologists and paleontologists. He also discusses the cathedral-like museums that sprang up in cities and towns, shrines to all that was progressive in the age but still clothed in the trappings of traditional ideas.

Genres: Science, History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

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Reviews

[Mir]

Freeman constructed this as a paired volume with his Railways and the Victorian Imagination, positioning the Victorians as posed or poised between the imagined monsters of the past and feared monsters of the future. Many prehistoric remnants were unearthed in the process of digging for railroad tracks, and the behemoth locomotives consume the fossil fuels that are the remains of the past.

This is a dense but not inaccessible book with plentiful illustrations. The focus here, however, is on changing ideas of geology and history, not on prehistoric discoveries or Victorian culture, so readers with those interests may wish to look elsewhere.

[Douglas Summers-Stay]

A look at how the Victorians felt about the prehistoric, what discoveries they made, how it affected their culture and even their architecture. It contained a good discussion of the Museum of Natural History in London, which I really enjoyed.