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The Victorian Aquarium explores the vogue for home tanks that spread through Great Britain around the middle of the nineteenth century. This book offers an example of how the study of a particular object can be used to address a broad spectrum of issues. The Victorian aquarium became in fact a point of intersection between scientific, technological and cultural trends; it engaged with issues of class, gender, nationality and inter-species relations; it drew together home decor and ideals of domesticity, travel and tourism, exciting discoveries in marine biology and tensions between competing views of science; it also marked an important moment in the development of a burgeoning environmental awareness. Through the analysis of a wide range of sources, including aquarium manuals, articles and fictional works, The Victorian Aquarium unearths the historical significance of nineteenth-century tanks, reconstructing their far-ranging cultural resonance.
Introduction
1. The marine aquarium in context
2. To the seaside and into the abyss
3. Beauty and the fish
4. The science of a miniature sea
5. Weird creatures in the home
Conclusion
Index
Silvia Granata is lecturer in English Literature at the University of Pavia in Italy
"This study of Victorian textual sources by Granata (Univ. of Pavia) is only partly about home aquariums. It is also a social history, a study of a different side of Victorian England [...] This book interestingly documents the rise not only of popular curiosity about science but also of the media-fueled knowledge taken for granted today."
– Choice
