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Constance Naden: A Critical Overview
Author(s) -
Stainthorp Clare
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12401
Subject(s) - poetry , comics , literature , narrative , victorian era , sonnet , idealism , romance , natural (archaeology) , faith , natural philosophy , darwinism , history , philosophy , art , epistemology , archaeology
Constance Naden (1858–1889) occupies a uniquely interdisciplinary position within Victorian studies: she was a scientist and a philosopher, as well as a poet, and viewed these roles as interlinked and reciprocal. She is best known for her ‘Evolutional Erotics’ (comic poems about Darwinian sexual selection), but her poetic corpus is much more diverse, spanning sonnets about the natural world, dramatic monologues about faith and doubt, and narrative poems about philosophical ideas. Naden studied botany, chemistry, physiology, geology, physics and zoology in Birmingham and published essays on both natural and social sciences. Her scientific interests underpinned her atheist philosophy, called Hylo‐Idealism, about which she wrote many essays and letters in periodicals. Alongside Naden's published poetry and prose of the 1880s, the recent discovery of three notebooks dating from 1875 to 1879 has thrown new light on the development of her interdisciplinary ideas. This article provides an insight into Naden's diverse writings alongside an overview of existing studies of her intellectual pursuits and suggests avenues for future research into her life and works.