Useful Knowledge: The Victorians, Morality, and the March of Intellect

Nineteenth-century England witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of publications and institutions devoted to the creation and the dissemination of knowledge: encyclopedias, scientific periodicals, instruction manuals, scientific societies, children’s literature, mechanics’ institutes, museums of natural history, and lending libraries. In Useful Knowledge Alan Rauch presents a social, cultural, and literary history of this new knowledge industry and traces its relationships within 19th-century literature, ending with its eventual confrontation with Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Rauch discusses both the influence and the ideology of knowledge in terms of how it affected 19th-century anxieties about moral responsibility and religious beliefs. Drawing on a wide array of literary, scientific, and popular works of the period, the book focuses on the growing importance of scientific knowledge and its impact on Victorian culture. From discussions of Jane Webb Loudon’s The Mummy! and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , to Charlotte Bronte’s The Professor , Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke , and George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss , Rauch paints a picture of 19th-century culture and addresses issues related to the proliferation of knowledge and the moral issues of this time period.
Useful Knowledge touches on social and cultural anxieties that offer both historical and contemporary insights on our ongoing preoccupation with knowledge. The book should appeal to readers interested in 19th century history, literature, culture, the mediation of knowledge, and the history of science.