Ebook: Darwinism in the English Novel, 1860 - 1910 - The Impact of Evolution on Victorian Fiction

The purpose of this work is to treat the impact of the theory of evolution and the theory of natural selection upon the English novel. Although the date of the Origin of Species, 1859, establishes a starting point for such an inquiry, the evolutionary theory under the name of the “development hypothesis” began to press for recognition even before Darwin’s reasonable explanation of how it worked gave the doctrine universal acceptance. Consequently, even before 1859, the novel touched on the theory, usually on the basis of geological and astronomical evidence. Passing consideration will be given to representative instances of such fictional treatment.

The major part of this study, however, covers the fifty-year period following the publication of Darwin’s epochal work: 1860-1910. Not until at least ten years after The Origin of Species, when the theory, weather-beaten but scathless, was first emerging from the storm of obloquy it had stirred up, did the novel begin to make use of Darwin’s scientific doctrine. By 1910 the great controversy which had raged around the name of Darwin had long subsided. Evolution, then, had invaded every branch of science, ethics, philosophy, and sociology. As such it had entered so generally into the warp and woof of modern thought as to be indistinguishable as an independent factor.