A WOMAN’S PEN AND THE POETICS OF GEOLOGY: JANE MARCET, ARABELLA BUCKLEY, AND DELIA GODDING

Ralph O’Connor argues in The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 that popular level geology books of 19^th century Britain were “performances,” bestsellers that riveted their audiences through a masterful combination of facts and rhetoric. While William Buckland and Gideon Mantell are perhaps best known among these authors, feminine voices, such as those of Arabella Buckley, Charles Lyell’s secretary, could also be heard singing the praises of geology through such poetic prose. At the same time, female authors in both Britain and the US were finding acceptance in science writing through the popularization of the so-called “familiar format,” in which scientific concepts were taught through fictionalized conversations between children and their parents and/or teachers. The acknowledged queen of the familiar format was physician’s wife Jane Marcet, whose work was not only widely used as textbooks but heavily influenced a young Michael Faraday. In the Northeast US, several young women translated the scientific discoveries of Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock into popularized prose, for example schoolteacher Delia Godding. This presentation will examine the popularizations of geology produced by these three women through the lens of O’Connor’s “Poetics of Popular Science” and situate them in comparison to the works of Buckland, Mantell, and other male writers of the same movement.