Victorian sensation

"Fiction or philosophy, profound knowledge or shocking heresy? When
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously in
1844, it sparked one of the greatest sensations of the Victorian era.
As gripping as a popular novel, Vestiges combined all the current
scientific theories in fields ranging from astronomy and geology to
psychology and economics. The book was banned, it was damned, it was
hailed
as the gospel for a new age. This is where our own public controversies
about evolution began." "In a pioneering cultural history, James A.
Secord uses the story of Vestiges to create a panoramic portrait of life
in the early industrial era from the perspective of its readers. We
join apprentices in a factory town as they debate the consequences of an
evolutionary ancestry. We listen as Prince Albert reads aloud to Queen
Victoria from a book that preachers denounced as blasphemy vomited from
the mouth of Satan. And we watch as Charles Darwin turns its pages in
the flea-ridden British Museum library, fearful for the fate of his own
unpublished theory of evolution. Using secret letters, Secord reveals
how Vestiges was written and how the anonymity of its author was
maintained for forty years. He also takes us behind the scenes to a
bustling world of publishers, printers, and booksellers to show how the
furor over the book reflected the emerging industrial economy of print."
"Written and based on research, Victorian Sensation offers a new
approach to literary history, the history of reading, and the history of
science. Illustrated and full of fascinating stories, it is the most
comprehensive account of the making and reception of a book (other than
the Bible) ever attempted."--Jacket.