United States
£ GBP
Biography of scientist and explorer Wallace, who in 1858 claimed to have worked out the theory of natural selection, only to be overlooked in favour of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This account covers Wallace's adventures to the Spice Islands, the Amazon, and the East Indies. Raby reveals Wallace as being a courageous and unconventional explorer, plunging into a variety of controversies, but always seeming to be neglected in the history of science and ideas. Here, in a stirring account, he is back on centre stage.
Peter Raby is Research Reader in English and Drama at Homerton College, Cambridge. His previous books include Fair Ophelia; a Life of Harriet Smithson Berlioz and the widely praised biography, Samuel Butler, as well as Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travellers, and a recent study, Aubrey Beardsley and the 1890s. He also writes for the theatre and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. He lives near Cambridge, on the edge of the Fens.
