Why read Darwin's Plots?

Book cover of Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Book description

Gillian Beer's classic Darwin's Plots, one of the most influential works of literary criticism and cultural history of the last quarter century, is here reissued in an updated edition to coincide with the anniversary of Darwin's birth and of the publication of The Origin of Species. Its focus on how…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Darwin's Plots as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

John Staddon

Author

Any list of books about science must have something about Darwin. The book to read is The Origin. But that’s obvious. I don’t need to go into it. So here is a Darwin book that is less obvious.

Most scientists will never have heard of it; it’s literary history, not science. I learned of it by accident, in a talk given by an economic historian. This is a fascinating book by a literary historian from which I learned much about Darwin. Gillian Beer recognizes that Darwin was a great writer. She traces similarities between his rhetorical style and the…

From John's list on The best books on scientific method: how science works, fails to work and pretends to work.