skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

Suggested reading

 

Contemporary writing

Anon., The English matronA practical manual for young wives, (London, 1846).

Anon., The English gentlewoman: A practical manual for young ladies on their entrance to society(Third edition, London, 1846).

Becker, L. E. B., Botany for novices: A short outline of the natural system of classification of plants, (London, 1864).

Blackwell, A. L. B., Studies in general science, (New York, 1869).

Buckley, A., The fairy-land of science, (London, 1879; Philadelphia 1888).

Holmes, M., Lydia Becker: A cameo life-sketch, (London, 1912).

Hooker, J. D., On the flora of Australia: Its origin, affinities and distribution, (London, 1859).

Huxley, T. H., Lectures to working men - Lecture 1: On Darwin's work, 'Origin of species', (Manchester, 1863).

Landells, W., True manhood: its nature, foundation and development(London, 1861). 

Lubbock, E., 'The ancient shell-mounds of Denmark’ in Galton, F. (ed.), Vacation Tourists and Notes of Travel, (London, 1864), pp. 357 - 371.

Smiles, S., Self-help: With illustrations of character and conduct, (London, 1855).

Stickney-Ellis, S., The wives of England: Their relative duties, domestic influence and social obligations, (London, 1843).

Somerville, M., On molecular and microscopic science(London, 1869).

Treat, M., ‘Is the valve of Utricularia sensitive?’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 52:309 (February, 1876), pp. 382 - 387.

Carnivorous plants of Florida’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 53:316 (September, 1876), pp. 546 - 548.

Home observations in Florida’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 55:327 (August, 1877), pp. 365 - 368.

Waddy, F., Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day: Dr Garrett Anderson, (London, 1873), p. 30.

 

Modern commentary

Barker, H. & Chalus, E. (eds.), Women's history, Britain 1750 - 1850: An introduction, (Oxford, 2005), especially 'Women and work' pp. 124-151.

Bernstein, S. D., ‘‘Supposed differences’: Lydia Becker and Victorian women’s participation in the BAAS’ in Clifford, D., Wadge, E., Warwick, A., & Willis, M. (eds.), Repositioning Victorian society: Shifting centres in nineteenth-century scientific thinking (London, 2006).

Browne, J.  Darwin’s Origin of species: A biography, (London, 2006), chapter 4: Controversy, pp. 84 – 117. 

Davidoff, L. & Hall, C., Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class, 1780-1850 (London, 2002).

Desmond, A.,. 'Redefining the X axis: ‘Professionals,’ ‘amateurs’ and the making of mid-Victorian biology: A progress report.' Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 3-50.

Deutscher, P., ‘The descent of man and the evolution of woman’, Hypatia, Vol. 19: 2 (Spring, 2004), pp. 35-55.

Farr, P., Pandora’s breeches: Women, science and power in the enlightenment (London, 2004).

Gender, Sex and subordination in England, (Yale, 1995).

Gianquitto, M., 'Good observers of nature’: American women and the scientific study of the natural world, 1820 - 1885, (Georgia, 2007).

Harvey, J., ‘‘Darwin’s angels’: The women correspondents of Charles Darwin’, Intellectual History Review 19:2 (2009), pp. 197 - 210.

Hubbard, R., The politics of women’s biology, (Rutgers, 1997), chapter 7: Have only men evolved?, pp. 87 – 106.

Kaye, R., ‘The flirtation of the species: Darwinian sexual selection and Victorian narrative’ in The flirt’s tragedy: Desire without end in Victorian and Edwardian fiction, (Virginia, 2002), pp. 84-117. 

Laqueur, T., Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (Harvard University Press, 1991), chapter 5.   

Lightman, B., Victorian popularizers of science: Designing nature for new audiences (Chicago, 2007).

Numbers, R. L. & Stenhouse, J., (eds.), Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender, (Cambridge, 1999).

Richards, E., ‘Redrawing the boundaries: Darwinian science and Victorian women intellectuals’ in B. Lightman (ed.), Victorian science in context, (University of Press, 1997), pp. 119-142.

Rossiter, M. W., Women scientists in America, struggles and strategies to 1940 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).

Rosser, S. V., Women, science, and myth: Gender beliefs from antiquity to the present, (California, 2008).

Schteir, A. B., Cultivating women, cultivating science: Flora’s daughters and botany in England, 1760 - 1860. (John Hopkins University Press, 1996).

Sheffield, S. L., Women and science: Social impact and interaction, (Rutgers, 2004).

Shoemaker, R. B., Gender in English society, 1650-1850: The emergence of separate spheres? (1998).

Shoemaker, R. B. & Vincent, M., Gender and history in western Europe (London, 1998).

Vickery, A., 'Golden age to separate spheres: A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history', Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 383-414.