Loading...

Constance Naden

Scientist, Philosopher, Poet

by Clare Stainthorp (Author)
©2019 Monographs X, 298 Pages

Summary

Constance Naden (1858–1889) is a unique voice in Victorian literature and science. This book, the first full-length critical account of her life and works, brings into focus the reciprocal nature of Naden’s poetry, philosophical essays and scientific studies. The development of Naden’s thinking is explored in detail, with newly discovered unpublished poems and notes from her adolescence shedding important light upon this progression.
Close readings of Naden’s wide-ranging corpus of poetry and prose trace her commitment to an interdisciplinary world-scheme that sought unity in diversity. This book demonstrates how a rigorous scientific education, a thorough engagement with poetry and philosophy of the long nineteenth century, an involvement with the Victorian radical atheist movement, and a comic sensibility each shaped Naden’s intellectual achievements. Naden sought to show how the light of reason is made even brighter by the spark of poetic creation and how the imagination is as much a tool of the scientist and the philosopher as the artist.
Taking a comprehensive approach to this complex and overlooked figure of the Victorian period, Stainthorp demonstrates how Naden’s texts provide a new and important vantage point from which to consider synthetic thinking as a productive and creative force within nineteenth-century intellectual culture.
This book was the winner of the 2017 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Nineteenth-Century Studies.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of Abbreviations
  • Introduction: Unity in Diversity
  • Poetry, Philosophy and Science Meet
  • Critical Currents
  • Chapter 1: Intellectual Biography
  • Biography
  • Naden’s Education
  • Philosophical Networks
  • Contemporary Critical Reception
  • Situating Naden
  • Chapter 2: Scientist
  • Naden and the Scientific Imagination
  • Heliotropic Urges
  • Physics and Physiology
  • Situating Science
  • Chapter 3: Philosopher
  • Nonconformism
  • The Path to Freethought
  • A Synthetic Philosophy
  • ‘A Modern Apostle’
  • Situating Philosophy
  • Chapter 4: Poet
  • Romanticism, Gender, Comedy
  • Naden’s Notebooks
  • Songs and Sonnets of Springtime
  • A Modern Apostle; The Elixir of Life; The Story of Clarice; and Other Poems
  • Situating Poetry
  • Conclusion: A Life Cut Short
  • Appendix
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series Index

Constance Naden

Scientist, Philosopher, Poet

Clare Stainthorp


PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stainthorp, Clare, 1987- author.

Title: Constance Naden : scientist, philosopher, poet / Clare Stainthorp.

Description: First edition. | Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2019] |
Series: Writing and culture in the long nineteenth century ; 8 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018033346 | ISBN 9781788741477 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Naden, Constance, 1858-1889. | Women poets, English--19th
century--Biography. | Women intellectuals--Great Britain--Biography.

Classification: LCC PR5102.N25 Z87 2019 | DDC 821/.8 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033346

Cover image: Further Reliques of Constance Naden: Being Essays and Tracts for our Times, ed. George M. McCrie (London: Bickers and Son, 1891), frontispiece.

ISSN 2235-2287

ISBN 978-1-78874-147-7 (print) ISBN 978-1-78874-149-1 (ePUB)

ISBN 978-1-78874-148-4 (eBook) ISBN 978-1-78874-150-7 (mobi)

© Peter Lang AG 2019

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Clare Stainthorp has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without

the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,

and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Clare Stainthorp, a specialist in Victorian literature and intellectual history, was the 2017-18 Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellow at Cardiff University. She has lectured at the University of Birmingham, where she completed a PhD in English Literature in 2017. Her research has been published in Victorian Poetry, Victorian Literature and Culture and Journal of Victorian Culture. Her next project focuses on the nineteenth-century freethought movement and periodical press, preliminary research for which has been supported by a Curran Fellowship from the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.

About the book

Constance Naden (1858–1889) is a unique voice in Victorian literature and science. This book, the first full-length critical account of her life and works, brings into focus the reciprocal nature of Naden’s poetry, philosophical essays and scientific studies. The development of Naden’s thinking is explored in detail, with newly discovered unpublished poems and notes from her adolescence shedding important light upon this progression.

Close readings of Naden’s wide-ranging corpus of poetry and prose trace her commitment to an interdisciplinary world-scheme that sought unity in diversity. This book demonstrates how a rigorous scientific education, a thorough engagement with poetry and philosophy of the long nineteenth century, an involvement with the Victorian radical atheist movement, and a comic sensibility each shaped Naden’s intellectual achievements. Naden sought to show how the light of reason is made even brighter by the spark of poetic creation and how the imagination is as much a tool of the scientist and the philosopher as the artist.

Taking a comprehensive approach to this complex and overlooked figure of the Victorian period, Stainthorp demonstrates how Naden’s texts provide a new and important vantage point from which to consider synthetic thinking as a productive and creative force within nineteenth-century intellectual culture.

This book was the winner of the 2017 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Nineteenth-Century Studies.

‘This book represents a much-needed, full-length study of the brilliant intellectual trail Constance Naden blazed as a student and scholar: of the many facets of her brilliant career, and of her expansive synthetic mode of thinking. Naden’s career interlaced so many issues and disciplines in such a fascinating way that, in this timely work, she acts as a case study for thinking about the value and practice of interdisciplinarity itself. This is an astute, lucid and illuminating analysis.’

– Marion Thain, Professor of Literature and Culture, King’s College London

‘Stainthorp’s study of Constance Naden both reveals and revels in the interdependence of disciplines that was her subject’s tragically short-lived contribution to nineteenth-century thought. In doing so she thoughtfully synthesizes the variant parts of Naden’s intellectual life. The result is a book of insightful combinations and cross-readings which illuminate the unity in diversity that was Naden’s driving force.’

– Martin Willis, Professor of English Literature, Cardiff University and editor of the Journal of Literature and Science

‘This is an important, meticulously researched book. Stainthorp is marvellously alert to Naden’s desire to find unity in diversity in her writing. She puts Naden’s poetry, prose and unpublished notebooks to work and the result is a ground-breaking analysis of Naden’s synthetic thinking. A boon to scholars working on Naden.’

– Ana Parejo Vadillo, Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Birkbeck College, University of London

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgements

To Julian Rees and Margaret Mary Hall, Constance Naden’s descendants, I owe a great debt of gratitude. It was through them that the existence of Naden’s notebooks came to light, and it is as a result of their kindness that I was able to consult these. Their further generosity led to these items being donated to the Cadbury Research Library in Birmingham, ensuring that others can freely access these fascinating texts.

I owe so much to my supportive and inspiring supervisors – John Holmes, Will Tattersdill and Deborah Longworth – whose encouragement, enthusiasm and insightfulness was invaluable as this project developed. I am indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the doctoral funding that allowed me to complete the majority of this research at the University of Birmingham. I also want to thank the British Association of Romantic Studies and the British Association of Victorian Studies, whose Nineteenth-Century Matters Early Career Fellowship provided me with the time and space to bring this book to fruition, and to thank those at Cardiff University who made me so welcome.

I am grateful for the incredible intellectual generosity of Katy Birch, Michelle Boswell, Adam Fernovski, Jonathan Memel, Ana Parejo Vadillo, Sarah Parker, Marion Thain, and Al Wilson, alongside many others who, at conferences and online, demonstrated outstanding academic kindness. I also want to thank this book’s anonymous readers, whose insights have improved my work immeasurably.

I greatly appreciate the support I received from the staff at the Cadbury Research Library, with particular thanks to Helen Fisher. Thanks too to Jon Clatworthy at the Lapworth Museum, Philip Fisher at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Sue Halwa at Conway Hall, Jane Harrison at the Royal Institution, Rachel MacGregor at the Library of Birmingham and Josephine Salverda at the Aristotelian Society, as well as numerous individuals at the British Library, National Archives and Senate House Library.

One thousand thanks to my wonderful family and friends who have been ever-supportive throughout the ups and downs of the past few years.←vii | viii→ To Claire Harrill, Jessica Gadman and my PhDdy buddies, a special thank you for your friendship, encouragement, and believing in me, especially when I was finding it hard to believe in myself. And last, but by no means least, to Craig Connell, for his abiding love and support. You’re the best.

***

Aspects of the ‘Biography’ section of Chapter 1 and parts of the ‘Naden’s Notebooks’ section of Chapter 4 have previously been published in my article ‘On the Discovery of a Sequence of Constance Naden’s Notebooks: Finding Her Voice, 1875–1879’, Victorian Poetry, 56.3 (2018), 233–63. These passages are reproduced by permission of West Virginia University Press.←viii | ix→

Abbreviations

The following primary texts are referenced parenthetically using abbreviations:

CPW: The Complete Poetical Works of Constance Naden, ed. Robert Lewins (London: Bickers and Son, 1894)

FR: Further Reliques of Constance Naden: Being Essays and Tracts for our Times, ed. George M. McCrie (London: Bickers and Son, 1891)

I&D: Constance C. W. Naden, Induction and Deduction: A Historical and Critical Sketch of Successive Philosophical Conceptions Respecting the Relations Between Inductive and Deductive Thought and Other Essays, ed. R. Lewins (London: Bickers and Son, 1890)

Memoir: William R. Hughes, Constance Naden: A Memoir (London: Bickers and Son; Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1890)

N78–9: Constance Naden, Untitled Notebook [1878–79], Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library, USS 115

P75: Poems; by Constance C. W. Naden. 1875, Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library, USS 115

P75–7: Poems; by Constance C. W. Naden. 1875–6–7, Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library, USS 115

In addition, the following abbreviations are used in footnotes:

MCM: Mason College Magazine

MCC: Mason Science College, Calendar for the Session

All emphasis in quotations is original unless otherwise stated.←ix | x→ ←x | 1→

Details

Pages
X, 298
Year
2019
ISBN (PDF)
9781788741484
ISBN (ePUB)
9781788741491
ISBN (MOBI)
9781788741507
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781788741477
DOI
10.3726/b13057
Language
English
Publication date
2019 (September)
Keywords
Interdisciplinarity poetry and science Victorian secularism Constance Naden
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2019. X, 298 pp.

Biographical notes

Clare Stainthorp (Author)

Clare Stainthorp, a specialist in Victorian literature and intellectual history, was the 2017-18 Nineteenth-Century Matters Fellow at Cardiff University. She has lectured at the University of Birmingham, where she completed a PhD in English Literature in 2017. Her research has been published in Victorian Poetry, Victorian Literature and Culture and Journal of Victorian Culture. Her next project focuses on the nineteenth-century freethought movement and periodical press, preliminary research for which has been supported by a Curran Fellowship from the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.

Previous

Title: Constance Naden
book preview page numper 1
book preview page numper 2
book preview page numper 3
book preview page numper 4
book preview page numper 5
book preview page numper 6
book preview page numper 7
book preview page numper 8
book preview page numper 9
book preview page numper 10
book preview page numper 11
book preview page numper 12
book preview page numper 13
book preview page numper 14
book preview page numper 15
book preview page numper 16
book preview page numper 17
book preview page numper 18
book preview page numper 19
book preview page numper 20
book preview page numper 21
book preview page numper 22
book preview page numper 23
book preview page numper 24
book preview page numper 25
book preview page numper 26
book preview page numper 27
book preview page numper 28
book preview page numper 29
book preview page numper 30
book preview page numper 31
book preview page numper 32
book preview page numper 33
book preview page numper 34
book preview page numper 35
book preview page numper 36
book preview page numper 37
book preview page numper 38
book preview page numper 39
book preview page numper 40
310 pages