The Island of Dr Moreau

New post for the Wordsworth Editions Blog… Although Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) sent shockwaves through the Victorian scientific and religious establishments (until then unproblematically linked), the book’s conclusion is remarkably optimistic: …from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production…

A Chronology of the Other 19th Century

A bit of fun... 1804 – Death of Natty Bumppo (AKA 'Hawkeye') on the American frontier, aged eighty. 1805 – Omegarus, the spirit of the last man born in the far future before humanity becomes sterile, appears to Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainvilleis in a cave in Syria with a vision of the end of the world. 1811 –…

A Short History of Monster Movies

‘Monster movie’ is a colloquial term for a sub-genre within horror, science fiction and fantasy film characterised by the threat of something large and frightening (or a bunch of small ones). Although most traditional horror antagonists are, technically, monsters, the designation is usually limited to oversized but essentially dumb animals. The label ‘Creature Feature’ (which…