Virginia Woolf and the Study of Nature

This book examines Virginia Woolf's interest and understanding of natural history and how it is reflected in her works.

Virginia Woolf's representations of nature reflect the increasing literary interest in science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Christina Alt analyses Woolf's passion for natural history and how it is reflected in her works.Reflecting the modernist fascination with science, Virginia Woolf's representations of nature are informed by a wide-ranging interest in contemporary developments in the life sciences. Christina Alt analyses Woolf's responses to disciplines ranging from taxonomy and the new biology of the laboratory to ethology and ecology and illustrates how Woolf drew on the methods and objectives of the contemporary life sciences to describe her own literary experiments. Through the examination of Woolf's engagement with shifting approaches to the study of nature, this work covers new ground in Woolf studies and makes an important contribution to the understanding of modernist exchanges between literature and science.