Orchid

Orchid PDF Author: Jim Endersby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642703X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The prize-winning history of the orchid: “an engaging and enlightening account of one of the Earth's most mythologized botanical wonders” (Richard Conniff, author of House of Lost Worlds). At once delicate, exotic, and elegant, orchids are beloved for their singular, instantly recognizable beauty. Found in nearly every climate, the many species of orchid have had varying forms of significance in countless cultures over time. Following the orchid’s journey from Ancient Greek medicine to twentieth century detective novels, science historian Jim Endersby explores the flower’s four recurring themes: science, empire, sex, and death. Orchids were a symbol of the exotic riches sought by 19th century Europeans in their plans for colonization. They became subjects of scientific scrutiny for Charles Darwin, who investigated their methods of cross-pollination. As Endersby shows, orchids—perhaps because of their extraordinarily diverse colors, shapes, and sizes—have also bloomed repeatedly in films, novels, plays, and poems, from Shakespeare to science fiction. Featuring many gorgeous illustrations from the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Orchid: A Cultural History was awarded the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize by the History of Science Society. It is an enchanting tale not only for gardeners and plant collectors, but anyone curious about the flower’s obsessive hold on the imagination in history, cinema, literature, and more.

Orchid

Orchid PDF Author: Jim Endersby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642703X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
The prize-winning history of the orchid: “an engaging and enlightening account of one of the Earth's most mythologized botanical wonders” (Richard Conniff, author of House of Lost Worlds). At once delicate, exotic, and elegant, orchids are beloved for their singular, instantly recognizable beauty. Found in nearly every climate, the many species of orchid have had varying forms of significance in countless cultures over time. Following the orchid’s journey from Ancient Greek medicine to twentieth century detective novels, science historian Jim Endersby explores the flower’s four recurring themes: science, empire, sex, and death. Orchids were a symbol of the exotic riches sought by 19th century Europeans in their plans for colonization. They became subjects of scientific scrutiny for Charles Darwin, who investigated their methods of cross-pollination. As Endersby shows, orchids—perhaps because of their extraordinarily diverse colors, shapes, and sizes—have also bloomed repeatedly in films, novels, plays, and poems, from Shakespeare to science fiction. Featuring many gorgeous illustrations from the collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Orchid: A Cultural History was awarded the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize by the History of Science Society. It is an enchanting tale not only for gardeners and plant collectors, but anyone curious about the flower’s obsessive hold on the imagination in history, cinema, literature, and more.

Flora Curiosa

Flora Curiosa PDF Author: Chad Arment
Publisher:
ISBN: 193058556X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Flora Curiosa compiles twenty classic botanical (and mycological) short stories from science fiction and fantasy. Stories include Rappaccini's Daughter (Hawthorne), The American's Tale (Doyle), The Man-Eating Tree (Robinson), The Balloon Tree (Mitchell), The Flowering of the Strange Orchid (H. G. Wells), The Treasure in the Forest (H. G. Wells), The Purple Pileus (H. G. Wells), The Purple Terror (White), A Vine on a House (Bierce), Professor Jonkin's Cannibal Plant (Garis), The Willows (Blackwood), The Voice in the Night (Hodgson), The Orchid Horror (Blunt), The Man Whom the Trees Loved (Blackwood), The Pavilion (Nesbit), The Sumach (Daubeny), The Green Death (McNeile), Si Urag of the Tail (Cook), Green Thoughts (Collier), and The Walk to Lingham (Dunsany).

Sauria Monstra

Sauria Monstra PDF Author: Chad Arment
Publisher:
ISBN: 1930585772
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
This anthology collects a wide range of early stories involving dinosaurs and other fossil reptilians come back to life. The short stories include The Last of the Vampires, The Lizard, The Monster of Lake LaMetrie, The Slaying of the Plesiosaurus, The Pterodactyl, The Monster of "Partridge Creek," The Diplodocus, The Last Haunt of the Dinosaur, The Great Beast Of Kafue, The Lizard God, The Beast of the Yungas, The Paradise of the Ice Wilderness, The Ancient Horror, and Report on the Status Quo. Also included is Arthur Conan Doyle's classic, The Lost World.

Novel Cultivations

Novel Cultivations PDF Author: Elizabeth Hope Chang
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813942497
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Shortlisted for the Best Book Prize from the British Society of Literature and Science Nineteenth-century English nature was a place of experimentation, exoticism, and transgression, as site and emblem of the global exchanges of the British Empire. Popular attitudes toward the transplantation of exotic species—botanical and human—to Victorian greenhouses and cities found anxious expression in a number of fanciful genre texts, including mysteries, science fiction, and horror stories. Situated in a mid-Victorian moment of frenetic plant collecting from the far reaches of the British empire, Novel Cultivations recognizes plants as vital and sentient subjects that serve—often more so than people—as actors and narrative engines in the nineteenth-century novel. Conceptions of native and natural were decoupled by the revelation that nature was globally sourced, a disruption displayed in the plots of gardens as in those of novels. Elizabeth Chang examines here the agency asserted by plants with shrewd readings of a range of fictional works, from monstrous rhododendrons in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Mexican prickly pears in Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm, to Algernon Blackwood’s hair-raising "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" and other obscure ecogothic tales. This provocative contribution to ecocriticism shows plants as buttonholes between fiction and reality, registering changes of form and content in both realms.

The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters

The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters PDF Author: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317044266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description
From vampires and demons to ghosts and zombies, interest in monsters in literature, film, and popular culture has never been stronger. This concise Encyclopedia provides scholars and students with a comprehensive and authoritative A-Z of monsters throughout the ages. It is the first major reference book on monsters for the scholarly market. Over 200 entries written by experts in the field are accompanied by an overview introduction by the editor. Generic entries such as 'ghost' and 'vampire' are cross-listed with important specific manifestations of that monster. In addition to monsters appearing in English-language literature and film, the Encyclopedia also includes significant monsters in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, African and Middle Eastern traditions. Alphabetically organized, the entries each feature suggestions for further reading. The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters is an invaluable resource for all students and scholars and an essential addition to library reference shelves.

Strange Science

Strange Science PDF Author: Lara Pauline Karpenko
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047213017X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
A fascinating look at scientific inquiry during the Victorian period and the shifting boundary between mainstream and unorthodox sciences of the time

EcoGothic gardens in the long nineteenth century

EcoGothic gardens in the long nineteenth century PDF Author: Sue Edney
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526145677
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
EcoGothic gardens in the long nineteenth century provides fresh approaches to contemporary ecocritical and environmental debates, providing new, compelling insights into material relationships between vegetal and human beings. Through twelve exciting essays, the collection demonstrates how unseen but vital relationships among plants and their life systems can reflect and inform human behaviours and actions. In these entertaining essays, human and vegetal agency is interpreted through ecocritical and ecoGothic investigation of uncanny manifestations in gardens – hauntings, psychic encounters, monstrous hybrids, fairies and ghosts – with plants, greenhouses, granges, mansions, lakes, lawns, flowerbeds and trees as agents and sites of uncanny developments. The collection represents the forefront of ecoGothic critical debate and will be welcomed by specialists in environmental humanities at every level, as a timely, innovative inclusion in ecoGothic studies.

The Sentient Tree in Speculative Fiction

The Sentient Tree in Speculative Fiction PDF Author: Jean Graham
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031605411
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description


America's Darwin

America's Darwin PDF Author: Tina Gianquitto
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820344486
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
An engaging collection of interdisciplinary essays on the distinctive qualities of America's textual engagement with Darwinian evolutionary theory, especially in regard to On the Origin of Species, which highlights the influence of prevalent cultural anxieties on interpretation.

Invertebrata Enigmatica

Invertebrata Enigmatica PDF Author: Chad Arment
Publisher:
ISBN: 1930585659
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
30 classic short stories with giant spiders, intelligent bugs, deadly insects, and other strange invertebrates.