by E Weber
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The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c.1880-1900 by Sally Ledger |
by H.G. Wells
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Amazon.co.uk Review
At the turn of the 19th century, just as today, many people were terrified--or thrilled--by the seemingly unstoppable progress of science, wrestling with questions of sexual identity, turning away from traditional religions or taking refuge in spiritualism, the paranormal and "new age" philosophies.
From poetry to pulp fiction, scientific polemic to sexologicical speculation, 1900 brings together a fascinating collage of writings which encompass the amazing range of beliefs, ideas and obsessions current at the turn of the century.
"1900 offers a striking vision of the fin-de-siècle shock of the new no less than the fatigue of the old, regeneration no less than degeneration, the viewpoints of scientists and futurists as well as decadent poets" Roy Porter.
"1900" is a splendid starting point for analysis of fin-de-siècle thought and for understanding the millenium" Elaine Showalter
Amazon.co.uk Review
"The fin-de-siècle was in fact the true Millennium", Mike Jay and Michael Neve confidently assert, and from the evidence of this full and fascinating collection they may be right. While 1999 pretended to be on the brink of oblivion, with its millennium virus and post modern end of all certainty, summer holidays for 2000 were still being booked. If you want real panic, then go back a century. The late Victorians' anxieties were multiple and strangely familiar: "The future of the human race, the apocalyptic possibilities opened up by science, the crisis of faith, the mass belief in the paranormal, the future role of women, the multicultural 'global village'". Jay and Neve have compiled over 100 snippets that together make a convincing case that fin-de-siècle is more than just a marketing ploy. Some of the pieces are expected--H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species--but others are ingeniously chosen. There are enlightening sections on late 19th-century spiritualism, atheism and the emergent sexology that don't merely go for the obvious--the rise of "the unconscious", for example, predictably draws on Freud, Nietzsche and Charcot, but juxtaposes them neatly with Strindberg, George Du Maurier's Trilby and H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. Most striking perhaps is the final chapter on "imagining the next century", with scary pieces on "feeble-mindedness" and "lethal chambers for the insane": nevertheless, they're tame compared with what actually transpired. Inevitably, this miscellany of often very short pieces will leave you hungry for more, but that's all to the good. There's a wealth of literature waiting to be explored: let's hope Jay and Neve's inspired collection opens the floodgates. -- Alan Stewart
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