Publisher Description

Whether looking for the sources of the Nile, the Niger, or the Amazon, penetrating the Australian outback, or searching for the Northwest Passage, the Victorians were intrepid explorers, zealously expanding the limits of science and human knowledge. In Bright Paradise, Peter Raby describes brave voyages and gives us vivid and unforgettable portraits of the larger-than-life personalities of Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, and Henry Bates, glorious examples of Victorian energy and confidence. He also explores wider issues such as the growth of knowledge and the spread of the empire. Witty, provocative, and exciting in the breadth of its research, this book charts an important period of scientific advance and transforms it into a compelling narrative.

Author Biography

Raby lectures in Drama and English at the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Preface and AcknowledgementsIntroduction: To the World's Beginning1Ch. 1The Scientists of the Survey17Ch. 2The Heart of Africa42Ch. 3The Naturalists in the Amazons75Ch. 4From the Amazon to the Andes98Ch. 5The Plant-hunters124Ch. 6Wallace and the King Bird of Paradise148Ch. 7The Savage Ape178Ch. 8Natural Perspectives196Ch. 9A New Mythology215Ch. 10Through the Looking-Glass248Bibliographical Notes258Index265

Review

"A thoroughly interesting, amusingly illustrated, and truly thought-stimulating tale."--John Fowles, Spectator "Peter Raby's book follows a disparate crew of botanists, scientists, and collectors who tried to order the earthly paradise which unfolded around them. Entrepreneurs they may have been--many were dependent on selling their specimens to finance their trips--but they were also scrupulous and sensitive observers... Raby finds some shimmering personalities... His book is excellent."--Daily Telegraph "Lucid ... fast-moving ... skillful... Bright Paradise is good at conveying the overwhelming energy of the Victorian scientific traveller, but is also poignant in its suggestion that this energy was ultimately directed at its own extinction as a species."--Literary Review "Well written, fascinating, and with wide appeal... "--Library Journal "Raby delights in detailing the many hardships these explorers endured--from predatory anacondas to hostile Tibetan tribesman--but never loses sight of their large achievements: the extent to which they changed our views of nature, of the interdependence of species, of indigenous cultures and of how life on earth evolved."--Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus US Review

A lucid and lively survey of Victorian explorers from Raby (English/Homerton College, Cambridge). "For the English in the nineteenth century, abroad, and especially the Empire and the colonies, existed to bring things back from," notes Raby in a neat introductory capsulization. Bring things back they did, to a fare-thee-well, but they were also, the author makes clear, agents in the imperial juggernaut, "part of a slow but inexorable process of domination and annexation." Opening the world to commerce may have been the end result, yet each of the venturers heard his or her own drummer and fashioned an inimitable style afield. Raby profiles Mungo Park, Richard Lander, and Heinrich Barth on their African sorties; Joseph Hooker's plant collecting in India and the mountain kingdoms to the north; Charles Darwin's monumental classification undertakings while being ferried about on the Beagle; the scientific entrepreneurs Henry Walter Bates, Alfred Wallace, and Richrad Spruce, who traded in beetles (a Victorian fancy), birds, and dried plants (though it is odd that Raby makes no mention here of the recent biopiracy controversies, particularly with Spruce, whose cinchona and rubber gatherings are a hot topic). And as women explorers have been given short shrift for their contibutions, Raby takes pains to chronicle the work of Mary Kingsley in West Africa and Marianne North's superb botanical artwork. Raby then turns his attentions to how the jottings of these explorers were appropriated and deployed by writers as diverse as Charles Kingsley, whose Water Babies Raby considers "a coded tour round the scientific debates of the mid-century," and Samuel Buffer in his utopian Erewhon, the romantic Rider Haggard, son-of-the-manse John Buchan, Dickens in Bleak House, and, of course, Conrad. Importantly, Raby shows how the works of the explorers shaped a new Darwinian and colonialist worldview, one that remains mighty influential in the modern imagination. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review Quote

Well written, fascinating, and with wide appeal. . . . -- Library Journal

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