Virginia Woolf and the Study of Nature

Description

Reflecting the modernist fascination with science, Virginia Woolf's representations of nature are informed by a wide-ranging interest in contemporary developments in the life sciences. Christina Alt analyses Woolf's responses to disciplines ranging from taxonomy and the new biology of the laboratory to ethology and ecology and illustrates how Woolf drew on the methods and objectives of the contemporary life sciences to describe her own literary experiments. Through the examination of Woolf's engagement with shifting approaches to the study of nature, this work covers new ground in Woolf studies and makes an important contribution to the understanding of modernist exchanges between literature and science.

Christina Alt is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa. She has contributed to numerous collections on the work of Virginia Woolf.

'Virginia Woolf and the Study of Nature is an enlightening and compelling read, both for Woolfians and those interested in the history of the study of nature. It offers not only fresh perspectives and insights into Virginia Woolf's life and work but wonderfully unexpected conversations between scientific practice and artistic composition.' Virginia Woolf Bulletin 'Alt's book is a valuable addition to Woolf criticism, establishing the relevance of contemporary developments of the life sciences for Woolf and, in so doing, bringing in an important new perspective through which to understand her.' Women: A Cultural Review 'This invaluable book fleshes out Virginia Woolf's immersion in the life sciences from her Victorian childhood to her modernist fascination with the new fields of ecology and ethology ... Alt provides a full delineation of late Victorian natural history in its peculiarly British conservatism and resistance to the kind of institutional science practiced on the Continent.' Louise Westling, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism