Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travellers - Softcover

Raby, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691048436 ISBN 13: 9780691048437

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Whether looking for the sources of the Nile, the Niger, or the Amazon, penetrating the Australian outback, or searching for the Northwest Passage, the Victorians were intrepid explorers, zealously expanding the limits of science and human knowledge. In Bright Paradise, Peter Raby describes brave voyages and gives us vivid and unforgettable portraits of the larger-than-life personalities of Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, and Henry Bates, glorious examples of Victorian energy and confidence. He also explores wider issues such as the growth of knowledge and the spread of the empire.

Witty, provocative, and exciting in the breadth of its research, this book charts an important period of scientific advance and transforms it into a compelling narrative.

About this title

Review:

Were Victorian explorers tools of imperialism? Accomplices in conquest and genocide? Well, perhaps, and even probably. The 19th-century English explorers who sought the origins of the Nile and the heights of the Himalayas saw themselves as agents of excellence, paragons of Victorian values, and they were well aware that they opened the door for compatriots who traveled not for knowledge but for wealth. Peter Raby examines the lives and work of the great Victorian peripatetic scientists, defending them from their modern detractors and highlighting the accomplishments of those who climbed mountains in search of tea and crossed jungles in quest of orangutans and cities of gold. Some were hapless, like the snakebit Henry Walter Bates; others were fearless, like Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, the archetype of adventure. All were interesting, and Raby does a fine job of presenting them to us.

About the Author:

Peter Raby is the head of the English and Drama Department at Homerton College, Cambridge. He is the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Samuel Butler.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0691048436
• ISBN 13: 9780691048437
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304