http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/800301890

The earth on show fossils and the poetics of popular science, 1802-1856

At the turn of the nineteenth century, geology?and its claims that the earth had a long and colorful prehuman history?was widely dismissed as dangerous nonsense. But just fifty years later, it was the most celebrated of Victorian sciences. Ralph O?Connor tracks the astonishing growth of geology?s prestige in Britain, exploring how a new geohistory far more alluring than the standard six days of Creation was assembled and sold to the wider Bible-reading public. Shrewd science-writers, O?Connor shows, marketed spectacular visions of past worlds, piquing the public imagination with glimpses of ma.

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