The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells

Book excerpt: Page argues that Erasmus Darwin's call to 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science' began a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining a range of writers, including William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Charles Kingsley, Samuel Butler and W.H. Hudson, Page shows the synthesis of evolutionary science with the imagination, which reached its pinnacle with the romances of H.G. Wells.