Patrick Armstrong – författare

Exploring how modernism registered shock experiences of the microscopic and extended vision in prose fiction through the work of four modernist writers – D. H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett – this book is the first substantial study of the interrelations between microscopy and modernist fiction.Illustrating ways in which optical instruments had the capacity to change, displace and reframe ideas of what the world is like, this book argues that encounters with the microscopic are often depicted as thresholds between the human and the non-human, in ways that reverberate through modernist fiction.Exploring a period of significant developments in microscopical tools and techniques, from the light microscope to the electron microscope, this book traces a shift that reconfigured the limits of the observable.

Exploring how modernism registered shock experiences of the microscopic and extended vision in prose fiction through the work of four modernist writers – D. H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett – this book is the first substantial study of the interrelations between microscopy and modernist fiction.Illustrating ways in which optical instruments had the capacity to change, displace and reframe ideas of what the world is like, this book argues that encounters with the microscopic are often depicted as thresholds between the human and the non-human, in ways that reverberate through modernist fiction.Exploring a period of significant developments in microscopical tools and techniques, from the light microscope to the electron microscope, this book traces a shift that reconfigured the limits of the observable.

Sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Biogeography’, Alfred Russel Wallace is known as the co-founder of the theory of evolution, and was well-versed in zoology, botany, anthropology, politics, astronomy and psychology. Although notorious for his unpopular and eccentric beliefs, he is still recognized as one of the leading figures in nineteenth-century British science.Patrick Armstrong describes Wallace’s long life, from 1823 to the eve of World War I, and shows him to be, in many ways, a more interesting character than his fellow scientist Charles Darwin. This compact yet comprehensive biography takes a psychological approach to give insight into a man who was plagued with misfortune: legal issues, obtaining full-time employment, and relationship troubles all vexed him. The book unlocks the life of a restless traveller who, although he grew up with an ‘ordinary’ education, became one of the most influential scientists of his time.