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Kendall's poetry is frequently read with a focus on its critique of the complacency of human anthropocentric interpretation of Darwinian evolution. The argument in this article, however, is that the tendency to focus on Darwinism in isolation has obscured the breadth of Kendall's interests. The passing reference to Kant and Hegel in a poem such as "Lay of the Trilobite" is an example of her sustained consideration of one of the most prominent intellectual trends in late-Victorian Britain: the revival of idealist philosophy. Kendall's comic verse encapsulates and interrogates the connections between several important aspects of late-Victorian culture. Her thinking about idealism informs and is informed by her views on Darwinism, and both in turn constitute parts of the ethical foundation of her belief in social reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 31 October 1828, William Burke and William Hare invited an elderly beggar to their lodgings. That night they strangled Margaret Docherty, stuffing her body into a tea chest and taking it to the dissecting rooms of the famed anatomy teacher, Robert Knox. It became the scandalous "Burking Affair." The criticism of Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher," one of its most famous retellings, emphasizes Stevenson's negative representations of anatomists. But it is more complicated. A close look at Stevenson's essays on fiction reveal a nuanced contemplation of Knox's "philosophical" anatomy. After years of reconsidering the import of Knox's ideas, Stevenson reworked aspects of the Knoxian narrative in writing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In rethinking and revising the story of philosophical anatomy and Knox in his novella, Stevenson develops a way of writing that evokes the best aspects of the philosophical anatomist's theories. [146 words] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article considers Peter Bowler's recent contribution to the genre of counterfactual history as exemplifying a 'restrained' counterfactual framework, one that must downplay the role of contingency in the historical process in order to present what Bowler calls a more 'natural course' of historical development. This restrained counterfactual methodology is discussed with reference to analogous debates within evolutionary science about the competing roles of contingency and convergence in the history of life, along with recent work done within the humanities about the more subtle nuances of counterfactual reasoning. Although there is little doubt that Bowler's study will help legitimize the genre of counterfactual history, it is argued that the role of contingency-once thought to be integral to the counterfactual-has been necessarily minimized in order to construct a narrative that is a plausible counterfactual history of science. It is in this way that Bowler's world without Darwin sheds light on our historiographical preconceptions about what makes for a plausible historical narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Darwin and the Beagle," by Alan Moorehead.

The article reviews the book "The Descent of Woman," by Elaine Morgan.