Sky of Our Manufacture

Jesse Oak Taylor is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Washington and the coauthor, with Daniel C. Taylor and Carl E. Taylor, of Empowerment on an Unstable Planet: From Seeds of Human Energy to a Scale of Global Change.

Taylor’s book has an astonishing breadth of reference, from Punch to scientific papers to canonical literature to children’s stories. The richness of nineteenth-century literature and society discussed here is tremendous, and the readings are wonderfully nuanced and illuminating. One of the most impressive books of ecocriticism I’ve read to date."" — Greg Garrard, University of British Columbia, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism""Taylor’s masterful book vastly extends the scope of ecocriticism. Through deft analyses of Victorian and early modern texts, he proposes changes to our understanding of narrative and its relation to the ‘natural world. His theoretical command and textual virtuosity produce a vibrant and compelling argument about how climate constructs narrative and about how readers and writers alike, construct climate. This is a must read.""— Karen S. Chase Levenson, University of Virginia. Author of The Victorians and Old Age"This engaging work of ecocriticism offers a much needed reading of ‘atmosphere’ in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British fiction. Jesse Oak Taylor analyses ‘atmosphere’ as ‘literal, in the meteorological sense’ as well as ideologically and symbolically charged ... Oak Taylor convincingly suggests that a shared ‘atmosphere’ makes it necessary for contemporary readers to think of themselves as part of a post-industrial continuum with the nineteenth century, not only in terms of aesthetic developments, but also in terms of environmental responsibilities." — Jessica Howell, Review of English Studies "the book not only examines how Victorian and early twentieth-century writers used literary representation to grapple with incipient climate change, but also tries to show how examining these books might help us to understand the world ‘as it is’ now" - Jessica Howell, Review of English Studies