Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature
How the ‘Terrible Lizard' Became a Transatlantic Cultural Icon

Reimagining Dinosaurs argues that transatlantic popular literature was critical for transforming the dinosaur into a cultural icon between 1880 and 1920

Richard Fallon (Author)

9781108834001, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 November 2021

217 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.59 kg

'… I enjoyed his book, and recommend it.' A. M. Lucas, Archives of Natural History

When the term 'dinosaur' was coined in 1842, it referred to fragmentary British fossils. In subsequent decades, American discoveries—including Brontosaurus and Triceratops—proved that these so-called 'terrible lizards' were in fact hardly lizards at all. By the 1910s 'dinosaur' was a household word. Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature approaches the hitherto unexplored fiction and popular journalism that made this scientific term a meaningful one to huge transatlantic readerships. Unlike previous scholars, who have focused on displays in American museums, Richard Fallon argues that literature was critical in turning these extinct creatures into cultural icons. Popular authors skilfully related dinosaurs to wider concerns about empire, progress, and faith; some of the most prominent, like Arthur Conan Doyle and Henry Neville Hutchinson, also disparaged elite scientists, undermining distinctions between scientific and imaginative writing. The rise of the dinosaurs thus accompanied fascinating transatlantic controversies about scientific authority.

1. Reclaiming Authority: Henry Neville Hutchinson, Popular Science, and the Construction of the Dinosaur
2. Reinventing Wonderland: Jabberwocks, Grotesque Monsters, and Dinosaurian Maladaptation
3. Rearticulating the Nation: Transatlantic Fiction and the Dinosaurs of Empire
4.Rediscovering Lost Worlds: Arthur Conan Doyle and the Modern Romance of Palaeontology

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]